In April 2025, reports appeared about the revelations of a Ukrainian clergyman, who allegedly said: the transfer of church holidays in Ukraine took place with money from the US Agency for International Development, and due to its closure, the reform would have to be canceled. We checked whether such publications are reliable.

“One of the schismatics who are part of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) admitted that all this story with the transition to the Catholic calendar, it was organized with funds allocated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Now he expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that without financial support from the United States he will have to return to using the Orthodox calendar,” the Telegram channel reported.Russia now"(179,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). As evidence, the post provides a screenshot of a publication with an interview with a priest on a certain website.

According to the TGStat service, about 200 similar Russian-language posts appeared on Telegram, which together received more than 1.5 million views. The channels “Two majors"(238,000 views), "Ne.Sugar"(220,000), "Ukraine.ru"(121,000), "Putin on Telegram"(165,000), "Bullet"(73,000), "Communications center"(52,000), etc. Similar entries can be found on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), LiveJournal (here And here) and X (here And here). Among the media, the publication “Another Ukraine", as well as the Russian Orthodox TV channel "Spas", which made a story on this topic as part of the quasi-fact-checking program "Test for the Truth" ("VKontakte", "Classmates", Telegram, Rutube).

Screenshots of posts from the TGStat service

At the end of January 2025, the administration of American President Donald Trump began the gradual disbandment of the US Agency for International Development, which was involved in coordinating humanitarian support to other countries. At first, almost all aid programs were suspended, and most USAID staff have been laid off or placed on leave. It was then announced that by September the agency would closed finally, and some of its functions will transfer to the State Department. USAID liquidation accompanied by numerous false reports and a campaign to discredit the organization.

In May 2023, OCU approved transition to the New Julian calendar. As a result of the reform, already from September 1 of the same year, Ukrainian Orthodox could celebrate church holidays on new dates: for example, Christmas - December 25, and not January 7, Intercession - October 1 (instead of the 14th), St. Nicholas Day - December 6 (instead of the 19th), Epiphany - January 6 (instead of the 19th). At the same time the church saved congregations have the right to use the old calendar if more than two-thirds of the parishioners so wish. Soon in Runet appeared reports according to which the OCU allegedly forced to reform of the church calendar (for example, moving the day of Christmas celebration, as follows from similar publications, the European Union insisted).

In addition to the OCU, educated in December 2018, in Ukraine there is also a Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which at the time of the start of the full-scale Russian invasion was subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), but in May 2022 stated about your independence. However, in August 2024, the Ukrainian authorities accepted law banning the activities of religious organizations associated with the Russian Orthodox Church - informally, many called his law banning the “Moscow Church”. Then the experts predictedthat the UOC and its defenders will challenge the provisions of the new law in Ukrainian and international courts. In February 2025 in interview to publicist Tucker Carlson, lawyer Robert Amsterdam, representing the interests of the UOC, statedthat the US State Department was involved in the creation of the OCU. “I think either USAID or other organizations funded this church... This is some kind of CIA operation to create a church that would be completely free from what they considered the dangerous influence of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Amsterdam said.

As for the confession of the OCU priest, the authors of the publications mentioned at the beginning of this analysis use only one screenshot as evidence. It is believed that it depicts the beginning of an interview published by Natalya Dankova on an unnamed website on January 31, 2025. According to the subtitle, the speaker of the Kyiv Metropolis Evstratiy (Ivan Zorya) spoke about the role of the media in the creation of the OCU, attitude towards the media, the presence of the church in social networks and countering Russian propaganda. The headline allegedly quotes the hierarch: “Due to the stoppage of programs, USAID is forced to return to the old calendar.”

Viral screenshot. Photo: social networks

“Verified” did not find any materials on the Internet with a similar title and a quote from Metropolitan Evstratiy. Fact checkers from the StopFake project installed, What Natalia Dankova, indicated by the author of the publication, works for the Media Detector publication. The logo of this media outlet is also present in the photograph captured in the distributed screenshot. The interview that Dankova took with Evstratiy, it turned out there back in 2019 - long before the OCU switched to the New Julian calendar and the cessation of USAID’s work. Although the subtitle and the photo are the same, the headline includes another quote from the clergyman: “Media owners and managers believe that religious topics are ‘unrated’.” There were no mentions of USAID in the interview itself, and the article was authored by Dankova dated January 31, 2025 in her profile are not available on the Media Detector website.

On the left is a viral screenshot, on the right is the original one. Photo: social networks / detector.media / collage “Checked”

Ukrainian fact checkers note that there is also no information on the official resources of the church that the OCU is planning a return to the old calendar.

The earliest appearance of a fake screenshot that “Verified” was able to track took place on April 8 at 15:06 Moscow time in the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Propagandist's Notebook", where the post received 4,200 views.

Thus, the representative of the OCU did not admit that the transition of this church to the New Julian calendar was carried out with funds from USAID, and did not announce plans to cancel the reform after the closure of the American agency. These messages are based on a fabricated screenshot of material from an interview that Metropolitan Evstratiy gave back in 2019.

Cover photo: detector.media / Ruslan Novosel