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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has informed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow of his plans to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian church. Their meeting took place in Istanbul, Turkey. "First, there was a meeting in front of all the members of the Synod. Then there were tete-a-tete talks, only with translation," Kyiv Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya), wrote on Facebook on August 31. Later, Metropolitan of France Emmanuel came out to reporters. He represented Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at the celebration of the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Kyiv Rus in Kyiv in July 2018. "He made a short statement, "We have informed...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that any Syrian government offensive to retake northern parts of the country held by opposition forces including Al Qaeda jihadists would be an "escalation"..... The leader of the Russian separatist "Donetsk People's Republic" in eastern Ukraine, Alexander Zakharchenko, was killed in an explosion Friday..... An associate of one time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has pled guilty to charges of failing to report his lobbying work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.... In 2016 candidate Donald Trump was calling him "lying Ted Cruz" but on Friday President Trump was tweeting his support...

Alexander Timofeev, another rebel leader, was seriously injured, said a statement released by the separatists. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a statement, called Zakharchenko a patriot and his death a "vile murder" intended to destabilize the region. A top Russian law enforcement body, the Investigative Body, said it had opened a criminal investigation of the killing as a suspected act of international terrorism. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed Zakharchenko's death on the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainian government declined comment. Ukraine has accused Moscow of being behind a string of assassinations on Ukrainian soil.

Beloved I AM your Kingdom for ALL resides in me, Therefore I AM your Being "Zion" Do You see? For I AM the Movement within You I speak you do, It is just this simple ~ Zion living and moving through you, I AM your innate Being ALL You need to see, I reside in and through you The Wellspring you set free, I AM your true existence My Kingdom can not lie, Just let go of your existence and in me rely, Not just in steps or breathing but in each beat of your heart, For its desire must...

As Kiev and Moscow clash on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, a new front has opened up in the religious sphere. ...A campaign to persuade Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to grant Ukrainian clerics full ecclesiastical independence from the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian politicians see such a declaration, known as a "Tomos of Autocephaly," as a key step in consolidating their country's national identity. To hear the religious leaders in Moscow tell it, separating the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russia would spark the worst schism since Orthodox and Catholic Christianity parted ways nearly 1,000 years ago. More immediately, the move would...

Ground and sea launches are accomplished with a jettisonable rocket booster. After firing, the Neptun deploys fold-out wings. (Photo: RNBO) UkrOboronProm (UOP), the head organization of the Ukrainian defense industry companies, has announced that the country has successfully conducted a trial launch of the new Neptun cruise missile. Developed by the lead contractor, the State Kiev Design Bureau "Luch," the cruise missile hit a maritime target at a distance of 100 km (62 miles). The principal supporting contractors are Motor Sich (engine), Radioniks (guidance), and the Kharkiv Aviation Factory (airframe). “We continue to strengthen the defense capabilities of our armed...

Prof. Miroslav Marynovych is Ukrainian Catholic University's vice-rector of university mission, and survivor of seven years of hard labor in one of the harshest prison camps in the Soviet gulag – Perm Camp 36. Marynovyych pointed out that Vladimir Putin has taken a new approach in his rivalry with the United States. “There was a time when Nikita Khrushchev invented the slogan: ‘Let us catch up to America and leave it behind!’ The idea was to make the Soviet Union as big [strong] as the U.S.A. Now Putin understands that is impossible. So the goal was modified: ‘Let us make...

At this very moment, a war rages on in Europe. Many Americans have forgotten or “moved on” from the idea of Russian aggression in Europe, but a very real and tactile conflict exists today that is contributing to a humanitarian crisis not seen in Europe since the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. In the four years since the conflict began, territory in eastern Ukraine has been won, lost and won again, always at great cost. Current estimates number casualties at more than 10,000 with one-third of them being civilians, including 166 Ukrainian children. As a former light infantryman from...

Authorities of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), an unrecognized entity that declared independence from Ukraine in 2014, have halted worship meetings by a range of religious communities, seized religious literature and fined religious leaders. The most recent raid came on a Pentecostal Church in Alchevsk on Aug. 6. Earlier raids included one June 10 on a Baptist congregation in the town of Krasnodon (official Ukrainian name Sorokyne), near the eastern border with Russia. The church had gathered for its regular Sunday morning worship meeting when police arrived. State registration Officers told church members there that under Article 9 of...

One of the participants of a panel show aired by major Russian TV channel Rossiya 1, historian Yevgeny Spitsyn, noting Russia's nuclear potential, offered a "quick" option to end the war with Ukraine. The historian seemed sincerely bewildered at the fact that Russia had been waging war against Ukraine for four years already. He then went on to suggest the Kremlin dropping "one little nuke on Kyiv" to "destroy the current fascist regime." "And that's all, the problem is solved," he concluded. As reported earlier, Russian populist "showman" politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who also holds a post of Deputy Chairman of...

Press Statement Michael R. Pompeo Secretary of State Washington, DC August 24, 2018 On behalf of President Trump and the American people, congratulations to all Ukrainians on your national day. The United States steadfastly supports Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. We pay tribute to those who have fought and sacrificed for freedom in Ukraine, and we stand behind Ukraine as it adopts transformational reforms to increase prosperity, security, and rule of law. The friendship between our countries runs deep, and we are committed to the success of a stable, prosperous, democratic, and free Ukraine. We look forward to...

Talk about spiritual warfare. An LGBT pride parade took place this last weekend in Odessa, Ukraine. LGBT pride parades are not particularly noteworthy these days. But what happened after the parade this weekend is: an Eastern Orthodox priest visited the parade site and cleansed the space with holy water. (Pictures below!) The head of the Missionary Department of the Eastern Orthodox Diocese of Odessa Fr. Oleg Mokryak led the cleansing, with help from a group of laypeople. Together, the dispensed holy water on people, the road, and on monuments as they walked, explaining to onlookers that they were specifically cleansing...

The Widow's mite a PENCE to you The widows mite a Pence to you, But soon shall rise from where now it is viewed, Humility about to rise, Where wisdom lives and no demise, So watch My choice begin to show, When "others" preach a Trump to grow, Truly this Pence shall be my choice , A man of God that speaks only My voice, Luke 21:1-4Tree of Life Version Teaching in the Temple 21 Then Yeshua looked up and saw the rich dropping their gifts into the treasury box. 2 He also saw a poor widow dropping in two...

A person close to Lanny Davis's law firm tells me there is no conflict between him simultaneously representing Cohen and Manafort-linked Ukrainian oligarch Dmtryo Firtash....

MOSCOW — Paul Manafort’s consulting clients before he joined the Trump campaign in 2016 — the leaders of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government — were overthrown in a popular uprising in 2014. Their problems continued this week. Mr. Manafort’s ... trial was “like a fairy tale where all the secrets are revealed,” Mustafa Nayyem, a former investigative journalist and member of Parliament, said in an interview on Wednesday. On Tuesday, shortly before a jury convicted Mr. Manafort, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Manafort’s former sponsors in Ukraine. By paying Mr. Manafort while simultaneously serving in government...

I have not forsaken you, even now you stand in my courts beside me as I in all My majesty release my justice and blessings . You see you are on display in my courts as one wise and esteemed for you know IAM and in the precipise of this revelation all of creation stands before The living God awaiting My desire for I AM All in All and this is who you know to be True and Faithfull as Creator Lord and God . Yahweh is My name and there is nothing before I AM. Therfore fear not oh...

The death of Alexander Litvinenko by radiological poisoning points to the possibility that the former Soviet spy may have been involved with Islamic terrorists in the preparation of tactical nuclear weapons for use in the jihad against the United States and its NATO allies. (snip) In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to suitcase nukes that were developed by U.S. and Soviet forces during the Cold War. Reliable sources, including Hans Blix of the United Nation, have confirmed that bin Laden purchased several of these devices from the Chechen rebels in 1996. According to Sharif al-Masri and other al...

After three days of deliberations, the jury still had not reached a verdict on Monday evening, marking day 15 of the tax evasion and bank fraud case against Paul Manafort. The jurors will reconvene Tuesday morning at 9:30 AM ET.

When Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service, told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern Ukraine, to name just a few issues. When I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was intolerable and would roil United States-Russia...

Now Poland’s Armament Inspectorate has begun a market analysis on the possible upgrade of the T-72M1/M1D tank while the Ukrainian version looks like one of the likely winners in the bidding. A delegation from Poland’s Ministry of Defense visited the Honcharívske test range in the north-eastern Chernihiv region in Ukraine and witnessed a live-fire demonstration of a modernized version of the T-72. According to Serhiy Zgurets, a military expert with Defense Express, the delegation saw a thrilling display of the upgraded T-72AMT main battle tank, Defence Blog reports. Deep modernization of the tank T-72А, T-72АМТ, carried out by UOP SE...