On April 25, the program “Brain Key” aired a video recorded in a church, which the host, Tornike Bagaturia, claimed had been filmed in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The footage shows priests and altar servers dressed in liturgical clothing behaving strangely – they strike various objects against walls, tables, and so on, attempting to make as much noise as possible. The video contains a Russian caption that reads, “After the occupation of the Orthodox Church, demons rage in Ukraine.”
On April 10-11, the same video with the identical caption was circulated on Instagram (1, 2) and Threads by Russian-language accounts.
The circulated video was not filmed in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In reality, the footage shows an event that took place in a church located in a Greek city in 2023.
The video aired in the “Brain Key” program had already been circulating on various websites and social networks throughout 2023–2024, including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. A large portion of these sources are Greek media outlets, which reported that the video was filmed in the city of Katerini, Greece.
Myth Detector, after examining photos of churches in that city, determined that the video was filmed in the Church of Saint Charalambos. A comparison of the photos and the footage confirmed that the place shown in the video and the sanctuary of the church are identical. The images and location of icons, windows, and walls match exactly.
We also tried to find out why the clergy were behaving in the way seen in the video. As we discovered, there is a ritual performed in Greece on Easter, during which priests, altar servers, and even pilgrims create noise and vibrations by stomping their feet, using sticks, and other methods. By doing so, they try to reenact the great earthquake that followed Christ’s resurrection. However, it is worth noting that this ritual is usually, though not always, carried out in a much calmer manner. Because of this, the particular event shown in the video was criticized both by the media and by social media users.
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