the letter was written by an american-canadian lawyer robert amsterdam. he was hired by an oligarch of russian origin and a sponsor of the russian orthodox church , vadym novinsky, to protect the interests of the moscow patriarchate. a month before, the lawyer visited kyiv, spent eight days there, met with the head of the uocp, metropolitan onufrii berezovsky, and based on the results of this trip, he decided to block the adoption of the law banning the russian orthodox church with threats. if this law is voted on by the council, our team will work to ensure that sanctions and other legal consequences are in place. imposed on those who allowed the attack on freedom of religion in ukraine. of course, this is not true, there is no question of persecution on religious grounds, because the russian orthodox church is not a church, but the same tool of the kremlin in the war as the fsb, the army or propaganda. this was clearly stated by the council of europe. for their part, the parliamentarians accused robert amsterdam of interfering in ukraine's internal affa