EP Patriarch Bartholomew Wishes to come to the Ukraine for the Celebration of the 1,020th Anniversary of the Baptism of Russia

The Baptism of Russia (Mikhail Shankov, 2003)

Kiev, 3 July 2008 (Interfax):

EP Patriarch Bartholomew wishes to visit the Ukraine so that he can participate in the celebrations honouring the 1,020^th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia that shall take place in July and August. Previously, Patriarch Aleksei II of Moscow and all Russia invited a delegation from the EP to join the festivities. In turn, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko personally invited Bartholomew “to head the celebrations”, according to a posting on the official website of the EP. (It should be noted that since Yushchenko did not clear his proposal with Patriarch Aleksei, the canonical hierarch of the Ukraine, his invitation is null and void: editor’s note)

The Holy Synod of the EP, at its most recent session on 23 to 25 June, “after examining this invitation from the Church, state, and people of the Ukraine, in all due respect for their feelings towards their Mother Church that led the Ukrainian people to baptism, shall in response to this invitation send a patriarchal delegation headed by his ‘All Holiness’ himself”, the internet posting noted. (Bartholomew was not invited by the Church and people. That would require an explicit invitation from Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev: editor’s note)

“This agreement is a sign of the importance and significance that the EP gives to the proposals of the Ukrainian President in connection with the celebrations of the 1,020^th anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Russia”, stated Yuri Bogutsky, assistant head of the presidential secretariat of Yushchenko. He pointed out that Mr Yushchenko had sent invitations to participate in the celebrations of the 1,020^th anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Russia to all the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches. “Soon, we expect that many delegations shall confirm their participation in the holiday festivities”, Mr Bogutsky said. (Again, the parvenu Yushchenko has no right issuing invites to other Local Churches without the permission of the canonical hierarch. Anathema!: editor’s note)

Earlier, Patriarch Aleksei had indicated his willingness to head the church celebrations of this anniversary. His Holiness has not been in the Ukraine since 1997. Some time ago, after the MP learned of the invitation tendered by the Ukrainian President to Patriarch Bartholomew to take part in the celebration of the 1,020^th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia, they reminded all concerned that according to canonical requirements, any valid invitation must proceed from the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia.

“According to the ancient and universal church tradition, the First Hierarch of a Local Church does not enter the canonical territory of another Local Church without the permission of the First Hierarch of that Church”, said Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, the secretary of the MP Department of External Church Relations. He also noted that “nothing is known of this agreement (the invitation of Bartholomew: Interfax) of the Ukrainian government in either the MP or the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the MP”.

The MP Archpastoral Council, which concluded its business last week, was preoccupied with the interference of the EP on its canonical territory in several countries, including the Ukraine. The participants in the Council reminded the EP that it was inadmissible to alter the firm guideposts of inter-Church relations, noting that ignoring the canons would lead to “dangerous consequences for the unity of Orthodoxy”.

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=25257 (in Russian)

Editor’s Note:

Yushchenko and his schismatic and Uniate cronies truly stepped in it this time. Bartholomew of Istanbul, better known as Black Bart to most of us, is trying to hijack a celebration that has been wholly planned by the MP. This is a church festivity, not a state affair; therefore, Yushchenko should have kept his nose out of this business.

Black Bart is attempting to set foot on the soil of Holy Russia without the permission of its rightful hierarch. What hubris! What arrogance! How many faithful are on his territory? 10,000 at best. He is the head of nothing, and he is certainly not the “first amongst equals”, let alone the Eastern Pope, as his apologists constantly reiterate. Who is Yushchenko going to invite next? The Pope? God help us. Thankfully, Benedict Ratzinger has the brains not to get involved (one hopes). However, expect Yushchenko to invite Uniates. That is insulting and quite beyond the pale.

In short, the wonderful festivities planned by Moscow have been ruined by Yushchenko and his Galician Uniate cronies. May they be thrown out soon, and may the godly banner of Holy Russia fly over Kiev again, the “Mother of all Russian cities”.

Rossiya, Ukraina, Byelorossiya, tri bogatyryam! (Russian, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, three (united) heroes!)

In Kamchatka Court, Doctors Received Permission to Save a Little Girl’s Life, despite Resistance from Her Sectarian Jehovah’s Witnesses Parents

Doctor in the emergency room, not the present situation, but, it illustrates well the emotions felt by the doctors when the parents refused treatment for their child.

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, 3 July 2008 (Interfax):

In a Kamchatka court, doctors defended their right to save the life of a six-year-old girl whose parents were against it due to their religious convictions. Early on Wednesday, the Procurator’s Office of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky received a message from Lukashevsky Regional Hospital of Kamchatka region that the parents of a six-year old girl refused to give their approval for a blood transfusion to their daughter, who was in the casualty ward with a serious cranio-cerebral injury, Assistant Regional Attorney Olga Filatova said Thursday to Interfax. The parents refused the treatment prescribed because they are members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect. Ms Filatova said their refusal was due to their claim that “their religious beliefs assert that such a procedure is harmful”. 

According to an order from the Procurator’s Office and under the applicable family laws, the relevant guardianship and trusteeship authority approved the blood transfusion to save the child’s life. During the session in the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky municipal court, the girl’s parents and their numerous confederates continued to insist on their right to refuse treatment to the child, regardless of the fact that the girl’s condition worsened with every hour. The court decided that the doctors could immediately start a transfusion because it could save the child’s life. Now, the girl is in serious condition, but, her condition is improving. The Procurator’s Office started an investigation of the parents in view of the fact that they failed to perform their duties, which include the protection of their child’s life and safety.

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=25271 (in Russian)

Editor’s Note:

Sanity prevails. Blood transfusion is an accepted medical procedure opposed by no major religious group from Amish to Zoroastrians! The little girl’s life was in imminent danger, and the doctors were right to override the bigoted objections of the sectarian parents.  

This shows the danger of sectarianism. All major religious bodies respect medicine and doctors, and urge believers to seek medical attention when needed. There is something wrong with a group that goes against this universal teaching. If adults wish to be nutters and hold squiffy ideas, that is one thing, but, to harm a child due to such is beyond the pale.

God bless the doctors and the court for acting swiftly to save the little girl’s life.

3 July 2008 (2). A Shot of Culture, if you please…

Buryat festival in Irkutsk

Buryat traditional archer

The Altargana 2008 Buryat Festival is opening in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, bringing together about 9,000 participants from Russia, Mongolia, China, France, and Kazakhstan. For the three days of the festival, Buryat performers, journalists, athletes, and artists will take part in song and dance contests and folk craft and athletic competitions. 

3 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29193&cid=87&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

Jury of the Russian Booker Literary Prize announced its long list of nominees for this year’s award

The jury of the “Russian Booker” Literary Prize announced on 2 July its long list of 23 candidates for the award. This year is the 17^th anniversary of the awarding of the prize. The short list of finalists will be made public on 2 October and the name of the winner will be announced on 3 December. 

3 July 2008 

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29193&cid=87&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

Timur Bekmambetov makes it to the top five directors

Timur Bekmambetov (1961- ), distinguished Russian film director

The Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov was amongst the five most famous directors of the world according to an announcement made by the Internet Movie Database. Mr Bekmambetov is famous for his films Night Watch, Day Watch, and Irony of Fate, The Continuation. His new film, the Hollywood blockbuster Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, was recognised as the top film last week in world distribution of motion pictures. The film was screened in 22 countries, with a premiere on 26 June, and collected over 84 million US dollars (1.969 billion roubles. 53.222 million euros. 42.126 million UK pounds) across the world in box-office receipts. Its box-office take surpassed 300 Spartans, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Hard Nut. 

3 July 2008                                                                                 

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29183&cid=51&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow ended its 232nd season

Aleksei Ratmansky (centre) with dancers of the New York City Ballet in 2005

The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow ended its 232nd season by staging a première, the ballet The Flames of Paris based on the music of Boris Asafiev. The theme of the ballet’s plot revolves events of the French Revolution. Aleksei Ratmansky, the art director of the ballet dancers’ group, reconstructed the choreography of the ballet using fragments of an old film of the play, which was produced by the great Soviet ballet master, Vasili Vainonen, in the 1930s. New dances have been created and the libretto was changed too. A love story runs against a background of historical events. Over 140 artists danced in the ballet.

3 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29199&cid=51&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

Thursday closes a one-man show by prolific Russian painter Sergei Andriyaka

Summer (Mikhail Kozlov, 2003). Mr Kozlov is a student at the Sergei Andriyaka Watercolours Shool in Moscow. This work was painted when the artist was only 16, a great talent for the future. Slava k Rossii!

Thursday closes a one-man show by prolific Russian painter Sergei Andriyaka, an exhibition that marks his 50th anniversary as an artist and his big splash in Moscow. As many as 1,500 watercolours are on display, most of them depicting a variety of magnificent Russian landscapes. Mr Andriyaka, who is currently at the helm of a Moscow watercolour art studio, gave a master class during the exhibition. Remarkably, some Moscow Metro underground trains are emblazoned with his and his students’ eye-catching works.

3 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29228&cid=51&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

Voice of Russia World Service

USA Lays Financial Foundation for Kosovar Sovereignty

Daniel Fried, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs said the USA would offer 400 million dollars (9.391 billion roubles. 254.4 million euros. 201.64 million UK pounds) to the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo. Judging by what Assistant Secretary Fried said, Washington expects its European allies to follow suit. Mr Fried said that much more than a billion dollars (23.51 billion roubles. 636 million euros. 504 million UK pounds) might be collected at a US–EU-sponsored conference of donor-countries, which is to be held in Brussels at the end of next week. This sum of money will enable Kosovo to get a good start, Mr Fried said. 

To call a spade a spade, the USA and its partners are laying a financial foundation for the sovereignty of Kosovo. Their donations will be spent in an effort to build a judiciary, a police force, and other elements of the governmental structure of that self-proclaimed republic. They will also be spent in attempts to streamline economic programs in economically-troubled Kosovo. Kosovo is a stillborn republic. The years that have passed since its separation from Serbia prove that beyond doubt. Only Western aid and drug trafficking keep it afloat. Left to its own devices, a legally- and economically-troubled Kosovo would have collapsed long ago. It owes its bogus sovereignty to NATO, whose vision of the Balkans has no room for a united Yugoslavia or the legal successor to that country, Serbia.

Nadezhda Arbatova, an expert with the Centre of European studies under the Institute of the Global Economy and International Relations, sees those foreign-sponsored processes as a threat to the Balkans. In Ms Arbatova’s view, “any move for Kosovar sovereignty will, in the absence of a legal foundation for it, send tension up inside Kosovo and in neighbouring countries. Furthermore, because they incite separatism, these sorts of moves will exert an equally negative influence on the Albanian minorities in other countries”. 

The US and EU strategy for Kosovo sets a dangerous precedent and, as Russian President Medvedev told journalists of the world’s leading industrialised nations, it will take Europe decades to eliminate their negative after-effects.

3 July 2008

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29210&cid=67&p=03.07.2008 (in English) 

OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly Lashes out at Russia

This editorial cartoon focuses on the true reason for the OSCE accusations. The US is suffering from the misrule of Bush (as it suffered from the misrule of Clinton), so, it blames everyone else.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ended its session in the Kazakh capital of Astana. It made surprisingly biased and ill-grounded decisions and hurled undeserved accusations at Russia. The Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE called for national and worldwide concentration on what it described as a tragedy of the Ukrainian people. What did it mean by that? It agreed with certain Ukrainian factions that the famine of 1932 and 1933 was, obviously, the result of Moscow’s deliberate policy against the Ukraine. The Russian and Kazakh delegations raised objections to that version of the past. The Russian delegates accused the Parliamentary Assembly of twisting facts. They reminded the assembly that people of all ethnic backgrounds suffered in those difficult years. To tell the truth, they said, many parts of the Soviet Union were hit by famine in the early 1930’s. The Russian delegates called for an objective approach to history and denied that the events were a purposeful and planned attempt to exterminate the Ukrainians.

Another resolution of the Parliamentary assembly of the OSCE urged Russia to refrain from moves that question the sovereignty of Georgia. Tbilisi feels the Russian strategies for Abkhazia and South Ossetia violate the territorial integrity of Georgia. Moscow disagrees with Tbilisi. Russian railroad troops, armed with spades and hammers, not firearms, entered Abkhazia. What the Parliamentary Assembly said about the forcible naturalisation of Abkhazians was simply ridiculous. Quite a few Abkhazians carry Soviet passports because Abkhazia used to be a republic of the Soviet Union. Abkhazia and South Ossetia held referendums to prove they have no desire to be parts of Georgia. Besides, none other but Georgia ordered troops into Abkhazia, provoking an armed conflict with that republic, back in 1992.

An expert with the Russian Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Kirill Frolov, sees what is happening as “a politically-slanted anti-Russian action. It is not the OSCE’s business to indulge in the interpretation of history. Attempts to hurl ungrounded accusations at Russia translate into attempts to rewrite history. Just the way Yushchenko does in his efforts to politically rehabilitate Ukrainians that collaborated with Nazi Germany”. Mr Frolov believes that the OSCE may yet cast doubts on the verdict of the Nürnberg Tribunal and move to rehabilitate Ukrainian Nazis.

Russia is calling for an overhaul of the OSCE. The word “security” is part of the name of this international organisation, and continental security is what this organization is supposed to protect. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov feels that countries will have to reconsider their membership of the OSCE in Europe, if that organisation happens to turn into a club of nations that focuses on nothing but so-called “humanitarian” issues.

3 July 2008

Anatoly Potapov

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29213&cid=58&p=03.07.2008 (in English)

Editor’s Note:

The fable of the so-called “Holodomyr” raises it head, once again. The tragedy of the time of the collectivisation hit all of Russia. There is no serious documentary evidence backing this ridiculous assertion of OUN fanatics in the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. Do not tell me about the “supposed” scholarship on this coming from Harvard. The chair in “Ukrainian history” there was established by Galician Uniates, and it serves their purposes, not objective scholarship (which is why no serious scholar puts any credence in its productions).

These lies are similar in nature to the ones hurled by the OSCE at Serbia in 1999 before Clinton’s aggression against Federal Yugoslavia. Then, Serbia was accused of fomenting a humanitarian disaster. The truth of the matter? Over a two-year period, some 2,100 people died in the Kosovo conflict, 700 Serbs (300 VJ soldiers and 400 civilians (mostly murdered by the UCK)) and 1,400 Albanians (700 UCK thugs and 700 civilians (mostly murdered by UCK thugs)). This was not a “humanitarian disaster”. It was, at most, low-level counter-insurgency ops against bandits and drug-runners.

Bush and Rice are trying to provoke a new Cold War. I would remind them that the USSR lost the last one because of economic collapse. If America were to provoke a new arms race, its weakened economy would not be able to stand the strain. Reflect on that.

3 July 2008. A Shot of Culture, if you please…

The Moscow Tretyakov Gallery opens its store-rooms

The Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow is opening its store-rooms to let visitors see little known works by prominent artists and also learn some new names of the 20th century.  By doing this, the gallery seeks to enlarge its permanent exposition with little-known artworks, as well as their creators, from 1910 to this day. The exhibition comprises over 100 beautiful paintings. 

2 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29151&cid=87&p=02.07.2008 (in English)

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29139&cid=48&p=02.07.2008 (in English)

Monument to actress Nonna Mordyukova to be erected in southern Russia

Nonna Mordyukova (1925- ), Honoured Artist of Russia, one of the greats of world cinema

A monument to the outstanding Russian actress Nonna Mordyukova will be placed in her native town of Yeisk in southern Russia on 16 August. The actress, now 82, resides in Moscow. Ms Mordyukova made a sky-high career in the cinema by creating unforgettable images of Russian women. The sculpture is of a beautiful barefooted peasant woman sitting on a porch. Nonna Mordyukova was listed among the top 10 actresses of the 20th century by the British Film Encyclopaedia. 

2 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29163&cid=51&p=02.07.2008 (in English)

Editor’s Note:

My favourite films by Ms Mordyukova are The Commissar (1967) and Russkoye Polye (Russian Field) (1971). Her combination of feminine grace and seemingly-masculine strength has to be seen to be believed. One of the GREATS. Of course, because she is of Cossack blood, she comes by her fire naturally.

Russian film-makers shoot a full-length documentary about baby mammoth

Russian film-makers are shooting a full-length documentary about a baby mammoth who saw daylight after nearly 40,000 years in the permafrost of the Arctic belt of Western Siberia. The focus is on international research on this unparalleled frozen mummy. The mammoth was a young female; it died after suffering a severe leg wound from a sharp piece of ice. The film about it is to be released in March 2009 in theatres in around 150 countries. 

2 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29174&cid=51&p=02.07.2008 (in English)

Moscow’s Roman Catholic cathedral hosts a festival of organ music

Moscow’s Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception opened the Russian capital’s second international festival of organ music. International jury members will also offer concerts and master-classes. 

2 July 2008

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=29175&cid=51&p=02.07.2008 (in English)

Voice of Russia World Service