Number of UOC Cross procession and KP procession walkers counted on the Net

Parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are heading for the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra

In the police, the number of the cross procession walkers of the UOC is deliberately decreased, while the number of the UOC-KP procession participants was inflated many times, writes Strana.

The estimated number of participants in the religious procession in the UOC is 200-250 thousand people. While the "head" of the procession was entering the Lavra, its "tail" was still on the Vladimir Hill, journalists explain.

According to them, the police gauged the number of participants much more frugally – only 20 thousand people. It is noteworthy that the safety of believers was provided by 5 thousand policemen, that is, according to the estimates of law enforcement officers, for every four believers there was one policeman. But the photos and videos from the procession say it all: far more people came out to support the UOC than the "officially voiced" 20 thousand.

"Only from regions there arrived twice by 20 thousand, only by those buses about which we know about. This is not counting those who traveled on their own, plus the residents of Kiev and its suburbs," expressed his surprise Spokesman of the UOC, Protopriest Nikolai Danilevich, at the calculations made by the police.

In the opinion of the authors of the article, the task was to "beat" the number of participants in the UOC procession. However, it was possible to solve it only in the form of official police reports, which counted 65 thousand people in the "cross procession" of the Kiev Patriarchate.

At the same time, a number of bloggers have published calculations that refute this figure. The length of the route of the procession was taken as a basis – 1.9 km from the Vladimir Cathedral to the Vladimir Hill.

"Taras Shevchenko Boulevard itself is narrower than Grushevsky Street, suppose 10 people in a row, then we need 6500 rows according to the meter per one row – 6.5 kilometers. And the length of the entire route is 1.9 km from the Vladimir Hill to the Cathedral. Then, when the head of the column is already on the Vladimir hill, the tail is to catch up within two hours after the beginning of the prayer service, so this is a complete manipulation. Hence, the national police underestimated the figures ten times yesterday, whereas today it overestimated them three times (or, perhaps, they counted Petro Poroshenko-“Tomosless” as one for a hundred thousand," sneers political expert Kirill Molchanov.

Blogger Aleksei Dovbush on his Facebook page used a different counting technique: he split a screenshot of the procession of the Kiev Patriarchate into sectors and counted the number in each of the sectors. According to his calculations, it turned out that the number of those present hardly exceeded 30,000.

However, the Kiev Patriarchate suggests figures being even greater than those of the police – up to 150,000 people.

On July 27-28, Ukraine celebrated the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus. On July 27, parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church walked in the most numerous procession in Kiev for all the years of Ukraine's independence.

A day later, the Kiev Patriarchate conducted its march of believers. On July 28, President Petro Poroshenko took part in official celebrations on the Vladimir Hill and the procession of the UOC-KP.

According to the preliminary data, about 250 thousand pilgrims took part in the large-scale religious procession of the UOC on the occasion of the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, which was held on July 27. As reported by the UOJ, officials massively blocked the participation of believers in the cross procession of the UOC. In Zaporozhye, Zhitomir, Rovno and other regions, the UOC believers were prevented from attending the procession in the capital, including putting pressure on carriers.

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