Dumenko in a TSN interview: Servant of the people or Culture Ministry ally?
What the head of the OCU, Serhiy (Epifaniy) Dumenko, said – and what he carefully avoided saying – in his TSN interview. His words reveal much about what he truly believes.
On 4 August 2025, TSN aired an interview with Serhiy Dumenko entitled: “Adherents of the ‘Russian World’ Are a Hindrance! Exclusive Confessions of the Head of the OCU Epifaniy for TSN”, in which he answered a series of questions. It must be said, they were extremely comfortable questions for him.
No mention was made of OCU supporters’ violence against the faithful of the UOC. No request to comment on the beatings in Cherkasy or Chernivtsi perpetrated by his followers. But even the questions that the “objective” TSN journalist did manage to ask were enough to draw conclusions about OCU leader's religious worldview. The result was indeed a set of “confessions.”
On Restoring the Ukrainian cell on Mount Athos
Journalist: “You said that part of the money (from the sale of Epifaniy-signed copies of the Tomos – Ed.), if it is a substantial sum, will go to restoring our Ukrainian-language cell on Mount Athos.”
Dumenko replied: “In earlier times, since the Cossack era, Ukrainians prayed there, stayed there, and were residents there. <…> Therefore, now we want to restore on Athos a Ukrainian-language cell for Ukrainians, where any Ukrainian will be able to come, stay, and pray.”
History is not, perhaps, his strong suit. To claim that Ukrainians have been on Athos “since the Cossack era” is a strange statement indeed – given that the founder of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, St. Anthony, laboured on Mount Athos long before that, in the 11th century. For the “Holy Archimandrite of the Kyiv Caves Lavra,” this is a serious blunder.
Dumenko asserts that once he restores the Ukrainian-language cell on Athos (with money from selling Tomos copies), Ukrainians will have the opportunity to pray on Athos. But they always have had that opportunity. All Athonite monasteries and cells have received and still receive Ukrainians – except for members of the OCU. The majority of Athonite monasteries and cells have refused them entry ever since the OCU’s creation in 2018. And now, due to the violence committed by Dumenko’s supporters, they are being refused even in those monasteries that previously – albeit reluctantly – admitted them. This was stated by none other than Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria.
Dumenko kept silent about this. Just as he kept silent about the fact that OCU members on Athos often claim to be UOC believers and name Metropolitan Onuphry as their primate – because otherwise they are deemed schismatics and are not allowed anywhere.
On the “growth” of the OCU
Asked how the OCU was developing and whether new parishes were appearing, Dumenko replied: “This process is continuing successfully. <…> Communities are constantly joining our large family…”
Of course, he insisted that this happens voluntarily, without pressure or direction.
This is impossible to believe. All have seen with their own eyes how OCU supporters seized cathedrals in Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, and other cities; the bloody brawls they staged; how they left their excrement in altars, doused church gates with pig’s blood, and committed other outrages. This takes place across Ukraine in varying forms. True, there are cases of voluntary accession to the OCU – but they are rare.
And naturally, there was another ideological flourish: with complete seriousness, Sergei Petrovich declared that “the ideology of the Russian world has been preached throughout the Ukrainian state for at least the last three decades.” In reality, during those three decades the opposite was true; what he means dates back to the mid-17th century.
On serving in the Far Caves of the Lavra
When the TSN journalist referred to Dumenko’s “prayer service” in the Far Caves of the Lavra and called it a historic event, the OCU head launched into the familiar narrative: the Lavra “is our national shrine, the heritage of our Ukrainian people, and must belong to the true Ukrainian Church. For a long time our spiritual occupiers used it and wielded the Kyiv Caves Lavra as a weapon against Ukrainians.”
It is unclear for whom this falsehood about “occupation” is intended. Everyone knows the pitiful state of the Lavra when it was transferred to the UOC in the 1990s after Soviet ruin – and the flourishing state to which it was restored by those Dumenko now calls “occupiers.” Ukrainians and visitors alike could freely pray in the Lavra and venerate the relics of the Kyiv Caves saints – until the Ukrainian authorities, like the Bolsheviks a century earlier, took it from the Church and closed access to the Caves.
And note this: Dumenko truly believes that the Lavra’s main draw is the relics of the saints. He said: “We understand that for the Lavra, the caves with our venerable fathers, who repose there incorrupt, are its heart. They are the foundation, because the Lavra has always drawn the faithful by the venerable fathers of the Kyiv Caves, by their incorrupt relics.”
If that is so, let him answer: why, when the Lavra belonged to the UOC, was it always filled with people – and when the OCU appeared, it emptied? Even before there was a strict ban on visiting the Caves. Everyone knows that almost no one attends OCU services in the Lavra churches, even on major feasts. In OCU photo reports, there are only close-up shots of Lotysh and his new companions.
Why? The services are in Ukrainian. The relics remain. The answer is simple: the Orthodox people of Ukraine know very well where the grace-filled Church of Christ is, and where there is merely a national-political religious project. What the people understand, the “Most Blessed Epiphanius” does not.
Nor does he understand (or refuses to understand) that the reserve which has expelled the monks from the Lavra, taken almost all the buildings and now the Caves, is a Bolshevik creation – the child of Soviet power, a structure invented by the Communist authorities to destroy the Church in our land.
He said: “A commission of the Ministry of Culture is acting, which is transferring everything to the balance of the reserve, because in the 1990s it was all given to the Russian Church, and there is practically no documentation. Now everything must be put in order, verified, whether everything is in place. And then, when the reserve has fully received this heritage, it will be fixed, because it is the property of the whole Ukrainian people. And so everything, I think, will be fine.”
Today the reserve serves the same “museum” godless function as in Soviet times. The OCU leader is pleased. Why?
Because his people are part of the reserve. On that basis, the state tolerates them in the Lavra.
This was confirmed by the very journalist, Zahorodnyi, who interviewed Epifaniy: “The OCU has, as is now fashionable to say, an ‘agreement’ with the Ministry of Culture and with the reserve, that all monks of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine remain and are also employees of the reserve. As reserve staff, they can be in the Caves and pray there. The representatives of the Moscow Church, obviously, have no such agreement.”
In other words, Dumenko and his colleagues have become part of the Ministry of Culture’s team – the very team that expelled believers and clergy from the Lavra, a team born of the Bolsheviks.
And of course, he did not miss the chance to accuse the UOC of distributing relics of the Kyiv Caves saints abroad. Dumenko mentioned only monasteries and churches in Russia, but it is well known that these very small – microscopic – relic particles were given as gifts worldwide. The Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian… in fact, almost every Local Orthodox Church has relics of the Kyiv Caves saints. This means they are venerated and prayed to throughout the world. And the whole Orthodox world is outraged that the current Ukrainian authorities, like the Soviet ones before them, have closed the Caves and forbidden the faithful to pray there.
On the Lavra brotherhood
On this matter, the OCU head said nothing new: as before, he claimed that many UOC monks want to join the OCU, but are held back by others. This is, of course, a lie. The entire brotherhood of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, even under threat of expulsion, remains faithful to its Church. Only the unfortunate Avraamii Lotysh could not resist Judas’ temptation, and cannot find the strength to repent.
One phrase of Dumenko’s deserves special attention: “They must understand that the process is truly irreversible, and the Lavra will be a true Ukrainian shrine, serving the interests of the Ukrainian people.”
Firstly, the Lavra is not a “Ukrainian shrine” but a pan-Orthodox one. Pilgrims from all over the world used to come there. The saints of the Caves are venerated worldwide, and their intercession is sought everywhere.
Secondly, Dumenko may see himself as a servant of the Ukrainian people – but the Lavra is not a place for “serving the people.” It is a place for serving God, a place of monastic asceticism, where the prayer of the Church rose unceasingly, and divine services gathered thousands of faithful in its churches. Churches which, thanks in part to Serhiy Dumenko, now stand empty.
On possible unification
Here again, the standard refrain: we (meaning the OCU) are ready for unification, waiting with open arms – but the stubborn representatives of the UOC refuse. When the journalist asked for clarification as to whether this was their own position or an order from Moscow, Dumenko replied that “this is their ideology.” By that word, of course, he means sympathies for the Russian Federation, the “Russian world,” and so on.
But in reality, it is indeed an ideology – not of the “Russian world,” but of fidelity to canonical order. How can one unite with those who do not have canonical ordination, who were “ordained” while under anathema, cut off from the Church – a fact recognised by every single Local Orthodox Church? How can one unite with those who, through violent actions, deceit, and brutal seizures of churches, prove almost daily that they have nothing in common with the commandments of Christ?
Conclusions
We cannot, of course, say what Serhiy Dumenko truly believes – or whether he believes at all. But from his words it follows that his religious worldview is limited to the idea that the church must be national, must serve its people, and that the relics of God’s saints must be listed on the balance sheet of a state reserve. This is in direct contradiction to what is written in Holy Scripture and to the tradition of the Church.
The Church serves neither its own people nor any other people. It serves God.
The Creed proclaims: “I believe… in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” The Church unites the faithful with Christ. It cannot be an attribute of the state or an element of national self-identification. In the Church “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, nor free, but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).
The relics of the saints do not exist to be kept on the books of secular institutions, nor to be subjected to examinations by pathologists, histologists, embryologists, and the like. Relics are a testimony to the action of the Holy Spirit in people who have wholly devoted themselves to God and pleased Him by their ascetic life. The faithful venerate the relics, pray to the saints, and receive their heavenly intercession – and they must have the opportunity to come to the Lavra Caves for that very purpose, an opportunity they are now denied.
The words spoken by Serhiy Dumenko in this interview – and certainly not only in this one – once again confirm: these are not the words of a shepherd of Christ’s flock, but of the leader of a nationally oriented religious organisation, a pillar of Ukrainian statehood, an element of a national cult. And so, for those whose priority is all that – the road leads to the OCU. But for those who seek God and the salvation of the soul – the road leads elsewhere.
