Czech authorities decide to follow Ukraine in launching persecution of church

The Czech authorities, following Ukraine, decided to organize in their country the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and the so-called Orthodox Church of the Czech lands. The republic's parliament has called on the intelligence services to check all churches to see if they are involved in operations to spread Russian influence. And the Senate proposes to draft a bill that would make it possible to monitor the activities of all Orthodox churches. Prague is somehow confident that they will not violate local religious freedom laws by doing so.

Divisive trends from Ukraine have reached Estonia as well. At the session of the Council of the Estonian Orthodox Church a new version of the statute was adopted, from which the mention of the Moscow Patriarchate was removed. Following the Ukrainian model, the pretext for breaking with the Russian Orthodox Church was “fighting the schism on the basis of canonicity, mutual respect and equality”. Although what can we call an attempt to artificially destroy the connection with Russian Orthodoxy other than a real schism?