Hrytsenko: “Victor Yanukovych himself confirmed the transfer of the Institute of Ground Forces to Lviv. And this is not the matter of Church”

On May 7, 2010, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, the chairman of the parliamentary committee for national defense and security and former minister of defense, commented to the news agency ZIK that the final decision to transfer the Institute of Ground Forces to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv was based on the study of questions approved by the government headed then by Viktor Yanukovych and to return the institute to Odesa would be wrong and senseless. Hrytsenko stressed that everyone has to do their own business; the church should provide pastoral care and the government should deal with economic issues and decision making. "Recently we have witnessed the Moscow Patriarchate talking about the oil business. Now, we can see an address regarding military matters. But they should stick to their own business," noted Hrytsenko. As RISU reported earlier, Metropolitan Ahafangel of Odesa of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate forwarded an open letter to Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych asking to settle the question of returning the Institute of Ground Forces to Odesa from Lviv. The hierarch backed his request with the following statement: "The western region of Ukraine is a center of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is under the influence of the Roman Pope. The Catholic Church for centuries has sought and done its best to capture lands populated by Orthodox Christians with arms and forced imposition of the Catholic faith. In the territory of the Academy of Ground Forces (city of Lviv) is the Greek Catholic Church, which influences the worldview and moral and spiritual values of the future officers of the Ukrainian army. There is an Orthodox Church in the Odesa Military Institute."

www.risu.org.ua/ua/index/all_news/state/church_state_relations/35529/