Translated material
Spy Cathedral?
The French intelligence services suspect Russia of the intention to create the world's largest intelligence center in Paris. Under the sign of the spiritual and cultural center of the Moscow Patriarchate
Having sold Russia at a sky -high price plot in the elite district of Paris, the French leadership was nervous. Not without the influence of the public opinion of his country, it began to suspect that under the guise of a grandiose “spiritual and cultural center ...
Having sold Russia at a sky -high price plot in the elite district of Paris, the French leadership was nervous. Not without the influence of the public opinion of his country, it began to suspect that under the guise of the grandiose “spiritual and cultural center of the Moscow Patriarchate”*, near the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees, the world's largest intelligence center will be built.
What are the fears of the French against the official Russian Orthodox Church and how reasonable are they?
During his last visit to Paris, June 11, Vladimir Putin and his French colleague Francois Fiion went to the embankment of Branly, to a rather inconspicuous building of the French meteorological service. However, Putin could not restrain his enthusiasm: "This is a wonderful, surprisingly beautiful place!" It is wonderful to its future, from which the Russian prime minister is breathtaking. As a result of a complex commercial-diplomatic transaction, the site almost in the courtyard of the Palace of Alma bought the Office of the President of the Russian Federation. A year later, the meteorological service will leave its inconspicuous building, which will be dismantled, and on a area of more than 8 thousand square meters. Meters Russia will build the Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP), a theological seminary, a library, residential premises and structures “for scientific and cultural purposes”. The commissioning of the facility is scheduled for 2013.
Negotiations on the “Theological Center” Russia began with the new President of France Nicolas Sarkozy back in 2007, during a visit to Paris Patriarch Alexy II. At first, advisers did not recommend Sarkozy to join this game, but the Vatican joined the case, seducing the young president with the potential role of the intermediary in the preparation of the meeting of the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow. This meeting, as you know, did not take place, but the ROC MP received everything that I wanted from Sarkozy. And only now, when the deal has already been made and money (70 million euros from the state budget of the Russian Federation) have been paid, the French authorities grabbed the head.
Copenhagen bargaining
“The French special services are concerned about the growth of the activity of Russian spies,” the British newspaper Daily Telegraph reports. The publication connects the strengthening of this anxiety just with the construction of the new Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in the center of Paris, claiming that this building will actually be a Russian Spy Center. The most detailed these fears were made by the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur (Le Nuvel Ozervator) in one of the June numbers. The author of the article “Scam with the Cathedral of the Kremlin in Paris” Vincan Zhover conducted an investigation in which he also refers to the publication of Novaya Gazeta of February 19 S.G.
As Vincan Zhover found out, the key agreement on the sale of the site and the construction of the ROC MP was reached on it on December 18 last year at a meeting of Medvedev and Sarcosi with the eye in the face in Copenhagen, where the World Climate Summit was then held. Until that moment, Sudovskaya Arabia and Canada claimed the site.
For our power, the victory in this matter was a matter of honor. “She,” says the French journalist, is part of a long -developed global strategy: the legitimization of Putin's regime with the help of the church. The construction of the Russian Cathedral in Paris (the first from the time of the Romanovs) will allow the current government to become a kind of successor to the Great Russian Empire. To settle on the embankment of Branley means to declare the restoration of Russian influence in France, and indeed in Western Europe ... In short, this cathedral should show that the clan of Putin is worthy of royal respect. " The practical implementation of the plan was entrusted to the manager of the President Vladimir Kozhin. Kozhin turned to “resolve issues” with the French government to the Consulting Company ESL & Network, which is led by a certain Alexander Medvedovsky, a graduate of the National School of the France Administration. He is considered a friend of the director of the French President Christian Fremon.
But the final success of the case was ensured by the diplomatic bargaining, held between Medvedev and Sarkozy in Copenhagen. French experts suggest that it was in exchange for the “Spiritual and Cultural Center” that Medvedev agreed to buy expensive Mistral helicopter carriers from France, to allow the French to the strategic project “Northern Stream” and take part in international sanctions against Iran. According to Le Nuvel Ozervator, which the press service of Sarkozy does not deny, the president called his minister of budget Erica Wert from Copenhagen and gave him some instructions regarding the upcoming tender. A few days later, Vertu was accepted by Kozhin. After this meeting, Russia proposed for the site on the embankment the amount, according to the official of the Ministry of the Budget, "exceeding our grades, which were kept secret." On January 28, the Russian Federation officially won the tender.
Removing his head ...
After the sale of the site on the embankment of Branly Russia, the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence of France raised the alarm. The formal reason for anxiety was the fact that the future “Spiritual Center” on three sides is surrounded by the palace of Alma - one of the official residences of the President of France. Currently, the inhabitants of the palace are the highest magistracy council, the presidential postal service, as well as 16 high -ranking employees of the Champs Elysees, who are provided with apartments in the palace. For example, here lives Sarczya adviser on foreign policy, Jean-David Levit, who enjoys the increased interest of foreign intelligence services. The Central Administration indicates the unprecedented growth of Russian spy activity (primarily foreign intelligence services) in France. According to him, in Paris the same number of Russian spies was revealed as the last time was recorded in 1985. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, as follows from the widely published materials of the Commission of the Supreme Council of Russia to investigate the circumstances of the attempts of the 1991 coup, was saturated with employees and informants of the KGB. Despite the constant calls of civilian activists and “competing” churches to repent in such a systemic cooperation with special services and condemn the “knocking” practice itself, the ROC MP does not comment on the facts of cooperation of the KGB and does not punish these persons provided for such cases by church canons. Key places in the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church are still occupied by people whose agent nicknames were identified in 1991 by the Commission of the Supreme Council.
Echo of the Civil War
The Russian side, after the “unfavorable” publications of the Western press about the spiritual project with a spy shade, issued several sluggish refutations. “This is another misconception of journalists that has no reason,” Russian prime minister said on June 11 during a meeting with former French President Jacques Shirak. The press secretary of the Russian President Viktor Khrekov called the Frenchmen of the French, named nobleness. Orthodox, who have long been living in France, think in a completely different way - mainly Russian emigrants of the first and second waves.
Russia is actively selecting the ROC MP from emigrants who are not subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, the property of the pre -revolutionary construction. As a rule, the method of splitting communities, the formation of “parallel” church councils from the newly arrived representatives of the “Russian mafia”, who begin exhausting trials with old emigrant councils, is used. These processes go with varying success - the temple under President Shirake has defended the temple under President Shirak, but the “new Russians” did not have a magnificent cathedral in Nice under the President of Sarcozi. The Moscow Patriarchate is also smeared at the famous temple of St. Alexander Nevsky to Ryu Daria in Paris, where the department of the archbishop of Russian parishes in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is now located. The old Russians in France are so frightened by the scope of the Moscow Patriarchate that they have already ceased to let the high -ranking envoys of Moscow into their temples. Such an incident occurred in early March with the second man of the Moscow Patriarchate - the chairman of the department of external church ties, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev). The Primate of the Russian Archbishopric of the Patriarchate of Constantinople Archbishop Gabriel wrote to Hilarion that he should postpone “until better times” a visit to the temple of St. Alexander Nevsky. As a reason for the refusal, the archbishop pointed out the decision of the French court on the transfer of the cathedral in Nice, in which the Zelezarhat community is performed, to Russia's property, which would entail the transfer of the Temple of the Russian Orthodox Church MP.
According to the Novaya Gazeta, the Protodiacon of the Church of the Russian Foreign Church in Lyon, German Ivanov-Trinnaya, the Moscow Patriarchate, "whose presence in France 10-20 years ago was only symbolic, today gaining strength in large turnover, using the covered support of the French authorities, which, in particular, explains our difficulties in judicial matters with the patriarchy."
* On the history of the transaction and plans of Russia regarding its new property in the center of Paris, "New" has already written ("The Orthodox Church is widely strides", No. 18 of February 19, 2010).
Instead of a comment
"New" turned for a commentary to the Secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchate for foreign institutions. It turned out that his secretary, Vladyka Mark, according to the assistant, is on a business trip and communication with him is impossible. When asked who can comment on the broken scandal, the secretary’s assistant replied that everything was on vacation, and he himself hears about it for the first time. Other attempts to contact the hierarchs of the Church were also unsuccessful - the connection was blocked. "New" will not leave his intentions to find out the point of view of the Russian Orthodox Church.