Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 5 – The Belarusian
Trykatazh telegram channel reported yesterday that Belarusian President Alyaksandr
Lukashenka has directed his foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, to begin negotiations
with the Ecumenical Patriarch in order to obtain autocephaly for Orthodox
Christians in Belarus.
That story was then picked up by Kyiv’s
Delovaya stolitsa, which subsequently
took it down from its Internet version (dsnews.ua/world/lukashenko-zapustil-peregovory-o-begstve-tserkvi-belarusi-04022019172400).
But as all things Internet, a copy of the article is available on another site
(urb-a.livejournal.com/16479172.html).
Both this pattern and the content of
the original telegram channel report strongly suggest that this is Russian
disinformation. After all, instead of straight reporting about where and when
Lukashenka gave the order, Trykatazh makes reference to the notion that “American
partners have more then once already pushed” for this.
Indeed, the
telegram channel said, “American diplomats in fact have made movement of
Belarusian Orthodoxy toward Constantinople a condition for further progress of
relations between Belarus and the IMF.” Supposedly Belarus consul general in
Istanbul Aleksey Shved will meet with representatives of the Ecumenical
Patriarch next week.
At the same time, as Trykatazh does
accurately note, last November, Archbishop Iov of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
said that Constantinople was prepared to offer to Belarus the same status it has
given the Ukrainian Church. (For a discussion of that offer, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/moscow-could-be-stripped-of-autocephaly.html.)
And it is also true that many
Russians fear that the Orthodox in Belarus will achieve autocephaly, that the
West is orchestrating this, but that there are as well many in Belarus who now
back the idea (iarex.ru/news/63776.html). Consequently, even if this Trykatazh
report is “fake news,” it is part of a more complicated game about that
possibility.
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