OMONovtsy, “black berets”, Russian élite combined SWAT police/Special Ops force under the MVD
Moscow 21 July 2008 (Interfax):
Sources in the MP say that Bishop Diomid of Anadyr and Chukotka, who recently placed Patriarch Aleksei II of Moscow and all Russia under an “anathema”, should be considered to have denied both his baptism and his ordination to the clergy. “No one can give a straight answer to the following question. If Diomid anathematised the patriarch and all of his predecessors since 1918, and he said that his spiritual enlightenment over the years has led to a gradual understanding that the MP is heretical, then, was he not baptised and ordained in a ‘heretical association?’”, Hieromonk Agafangel Belykh, the rector of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Anadyr (where Bishop Diomid previously served), posted on his internet-site. Fr Agafangel also denied rumours reported in various media outlets that when Archbishop Mark of Khabarovsk and Priamursky arrived in Anadyr at the beginning of July he was accompanied by the OMON (élite paramilitary security police under the MVD, the “black berets”: editor’s note). “Some wrote that allegedly I said, ‘The OMON came with us from Khabarovsk, as we feared what the local believers would do’. That is utter rot. I came from Moscow, not Khabarovsk, and I can tell you that no OMON came with me”, he wrote.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=25562 (in Russian)
Editor’s Note:
An interesting question from Fr Agafangel… If the MP was graceless, then Diomid was not baptised, nor was he ordained. Ergo, he was no clergyman, not even an Orthodox Christian, he was only a loud Protestant layman dressed up in Orthodox finery, according to his own reasoning! The logic is inescapable. The heretics ALWAYS catch themselves in their own nets! As for the OMON… there is no doubt that there is an OMON detachment in Anadyr, and they were ready to rumble if some of Diomid’s more rabid supporters tried something funny. No doubt, the “word” was passed on “the street”, and no one tried any games as a result. Sanity prevails…
