DEPUTY CHANCELLOR OF MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE CALLS PUTIN'S SPEECH "BEGINNING OF HEALING OF AMNESIA"
"The president's speech restores the fullness of the perception of Russian history," the deputy chancellor of the Moscow patriarchate, Bishop of Zelenograd Savva, a vicar of Patriarch Kirill, declared on 21 February. The comment on Vladimir Putin's speech, which was shown in the evening of 21 February by Russian television, was posted by the archpriest on his Telegram channel.
In his opinion, this speech, in which Putin cast doubt on the existence of Ukraine—at least, within its current borders—and declared the impossibility of a reconciliation of Russia and the West, opened new horizons of modern Russian statehood. "We are no longer 30 years old nor 100 years. We are more than 1,000 years old once again," Savva exclaimed.
"Today the clock has been reset. We very much are hoping that the president's speech is the beginning of the healing of amnesia," the bishop wrote, using the plural form, hinting that he is expressing not merely his own personal opinion.
Bishop Savva was born in 1978 into a family of Russian emigrants in France. In 2005 he transferred from the Russian exarchate of the Constantinople patriarchate in Paris into the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. From 2006 he worked in the Department for External Church Relations of the M.P., where he was ordained a monastic priest by Metropolitan Kirill [now, Patriarch Kirill—tr.]. In 2019 he was ordained a bishop. He also heads up the Analytical Control Service of the Moscow patriarchate. (tr. by PDS, posted 22 February 2022)
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