KYIV: Ukraine’s Interior Ministry on Friday placed the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, a backer of the Kremlin’s 21-month-old war against Kyiv, on a wanted list after security services accused him of abetting the conflict.
The measure is purely symbolic as Patriarch Kirill is in Russia and under no threat of arrest. It was the latest step in Ukraine’s campaign to uproot the influence of priests it alleges maintain close links to Russia and subvert Ukrainian society.
A post on the Ukrainian ministry’s wanted list identified Kirill by name, showed him in his clerical robes and described him as “an individual in hiding from the bodies of pre-trial investigation.” It said he had been “missing” since November 11.
Orthodox Christianity is the dominant faith in Ukraine and authorities in Kyiv have launched criminal cases against clergy linked to a branch of the Orthodox church once directly linked to the Russian church and Kirill.
Parliament in Kyiv is considering a bill that would ban that branch of the church, which has lost many of its parishioners since Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The church says it severed all links to Moscow in May 2022.
Ukraine’s SBU security service last month issued a document saying Kirill “infringed Ukrainian sovereignty” by virtue of his position as “part of the closest entourage of Russia’s military and political leadership.”
Security forces have launched dozens of criminal cases, including accusations of treason, against priests and officials linked to the branch of the church associated with Moscow.
Kirill has denounced those actions and appealed to clerical leaders world-wide to stop Ukraine’s moves against the church.
A senior official in the Russian church told Russia’s RIA news agency that placing Kirill on a wanted list was “a step that is as ridiculous as it is predictable.”
Vladimir Legoida, responsible for ties with other churches, told RIA that Ukrainian authorities were guilty of “lawlessness and attempting to intimidate parishioners.”
Ukraine puts head of Russian church on ‘wanted’ list
https://arab.news/gtsp6
Ukraine puts head of Russian church on ‘wanted’ list
- The measure is purely symbolic as Patriarch Kirill is in Russia and under no threat of arrest
- The Russian Orthodox Church has lost many of its parishioners in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
