❗️Today, July 21st, on the feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, we celebrate the Day of Military Clergy.

This date was established to commemorate the decision to revive the institution of military clergy, which was made in 2009, on the very day of the Kazan Icon – a revered patron saint of the Russian military since ancient times.

This decision brought the military priest back into service. His service, as it was centuries ago, is not determined by a fixed schedule, but by the pastoral duty to be where he is most needed. His parish is the front lines, the hospital, the assault unit. His flock is those who may at any moment stand before God.

He hears confessions under the explosions of shells, administers communion in a dugout, and baptizes former atheists. He prays over the fallen and blesses those going into battle.

But his main task is to bear witness to love and mercy in the very heart of brutality. To preserve the humanity within the soldier. To remind them that even in war, the soul remains Christian.

On this day, we pray for all the pastors who carry their cross in the military ranks, asking for their help and intercession from the Queen of Heaven.

Eternal memory to the fallen. May the living have many years.

@AussieCossack via @voennyotdel

The Sky News Australia segment aired on The Macpherson Angle on 19 July mocked the Russian Embassy’s concern over the spread of hate speech stemming from comments by Australian military personnel who train the Ukrainian army to be “best skilled in killing Russians”.

What is a matter of laughter and jokes for Sky News Australia evokes painful historical parallels for us. In a directive to Alfred Rosenberg dated 23 July 1942 concerning the implementation of Generalplan Ost, Adolf Hitler wrote: “Speaking militarily, we must kill three to four million Russians every year”.

Notably, the presenters and contributors to the segment selectively quoted our statement, concealing from their audience the very points we were making:

🔹The “kill Russians” narrative targets the entire ethnic group.

🔹Australians of Russian origin may also be placed at risk as a result of such rhetoric.

🔹The “skills” provided by the Australian Defence Force are being used by the Ukrainian army to murder civilians.

Furthermore, Sky News Australia never bothered to examine the root causes of the conflict in Ukraine, where anti-Russian hate speech and murderous violence have become standard practice of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime since 2014. Its ideology is quite vividly illustrated by the words of former Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine Andrey Parubiy, who stated on 4 September 2018 that he supported direct democracy, and that the person who most practiced direct democracy was Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Welcome to Ukrainian democracy as it is, dear Sky News Australia. This is what you and the West in general are protecting and helping so fiercely.

Neo-Nazi ideology and practices are what we, Russians, are fighting against. During the Second World War, we defeated German and other European Nazis who espoused the same views and likewise sought to be best at “killing Russians”, as well as people of other “inferior races”. That struggle cost our country 27 million lives – a sacrifice too great to allow Nazism to raise its head again.

Last but not least, if hatred against one ethnic group is tolerated, accepted and amplified, no other group will remain immune. Hate speech begets violence and terrorism with grave consequences for society. If this were not the case, there would have been no reason to establish the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.