Oleg Verniaiev is being accused of being pro-Russian by the Ukrainians again. The first time it happened was in 2015 when he took a photo with David Belyavskiy at the European Championships. Verniaiev said he even received threats from Ukrainians: people wrote him on social media promising to beat him up or to wreck his car. Thankfully, nothing bad happened.
However, since 2015, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is only getting worse and Verniaiev drew some heat again when he posted a picture with Metropolitan Onuphrius, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. What’s wrong with that you’ll ask? Well, apparently, there are two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, one is independent and was established just this year, after splitting from the Russian Orthodox Church, and the other one is under the rule of the Russian Orthodox Church. On St. Nikolai Day, Verniaiev visited Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the oldest Russian Orthodox Monastery which is situated in Kiev (Kiev used to be the capital of Old Russia) and met with the Metropolitan.
While the monastery is one of the main tourist attractions in Kiev and a holy place for many Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, currently, it’s considered unpatriotic to pledge allegiance to this church. People are posting obscenities and threats in the comments to this Instagram post, claiming that Verniaiev is betraying his homeland, that his sympathies lie with Russia and that it’s all due to his place of birth (Verniaiev is originally from Donets, a Ukrainian city currently occupied by Russia).
The last time
Photo: Soviet Sport
