Russian priests doing basic military training. Photo by Anatoly Zhdanov/KP
Xenia Loutchenko
This article first appeared in German as “Kirche mobilisiert” at Netschrift.de
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, did not attend the ceremony of annexation of the occupied regions of Ukraine to Russia in the St. George's Hall of the Kremlin. In the morning, the Patriarchate's press service announced that the Patriarch had contracted a coronavirus and had to go on bed rest. Until now the Patriarch's health has been kept secret, and it is the first time he has been so publicly ill. So far, however, there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that the Patriarch faked an illness to maintain the appearance of neutrality. The Russian Orthodox Church was still represented at the ceremony, albeit by less prominent figures: Metropolitan Dionisy (Porubay), Administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate and Metropolitan Anthony (Sevruk), Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations, were present in the Kremlin. Also present were representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Metropolitan Panteleimon (Povoroznyuk) of Luhansk and Alchevsk and Archimandrite John (Prokopenko), Rector of the Holy Savva Monastery in Melitopol. Both are known for their collaborative pro-Russian stance, and their presence in the Kremlin is unlikely to make life easier for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
In March 2014, in the same St. George's Hall in the Kremlin, Patriarch Kirill was also absent from the solemn announcement of Crimea's “union” with Russia. It was said at the time that this was perceived as an affront in the presidential administration and damaged the Patriarchate's relationship with the Kremlin. But eight years ago there was a rational explanation: the Patriarch still had the illusion that by maintaining the status quo of the Crimean dioceses (their subordination to the Ukrainian Church), he would prevent the creation of an autocephalous Church in Ukraine that nevertheless arose in 2018 and caused a serious conflict between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
On this occasion the Patriarch's absence from the Kremlin may be explained by the fact that he does not want to appear unnecessarily in front of Western audiences in order to avoid further personal sanctions. Kirill has already been personally sanctioned by Britain, Canada and Ukraine, and Lithuania has banned him from entering its territory for five years. Presumably he now fears sanctions from the EU (from which he was saved once before by Viktor Orban) and the USA. At the same time, from the very beginning of the war, the Patriarch himself and other representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church took a clear position of support for the war. He called fighters in Ukraine "defenders of the fatherland", said that in Donbass there was a "metaphysical struggle" and that its residents did not want gay parades. In a long-distance call with Pope Francis Kirill showed a map and read prepared arguments justifying the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, the Patriarch has fully identified the Russian Orthodox Church with Putin's state and is willing to share its fate.
Russian Orthodox Church
On September 21, President Putin announced “partial mobilization”. Now the war has reached every Russian: everyone has relatives or acquaintances who have received a summons. Hundreds of thousands of draft-age men left Russia to avoid going to war. The Church has supported its President and continues to bless the soldiers. After the announcement of the mobilization, Patriarch Kirill gave two sermons. In one he directly compared the death of soldiers in battle to Christ's atoning sacrifice, saying that he who "dies in the performance of his military duties [...] commits an act amounting to sacrifice. He offers himself as a sacrifice for others. And this sacrifice washes away all sins committed by that man” (an obvious heresy from the standpoint of Christian doctrine). Another called for a "spiritual mobilization" by the Russians, which should lead to "reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine."
A few days later, the results of the special presidential grant competition for social support projects of the occupied Donbass were announced. The two largest recipients of grants were the St. Alexis Hospital of the Moscow Patriarchate (it received 48.8 million rubles) and the “Church Refugee Aid” project of the Synodal Department of Charity and Social Service (27.4 million rubles). Both the hospital and the synodal department are headed by Bishop Panteleimon (Shatov) of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church has de facto become one of the largest providers of assistance to refugees from the occupied territories of Ukraine who are in Russia.
Meanwhile, Orthodox priests began to receive the summons. The Telegram channel “Christians Against the War“ has been monitoring the situation. A large number of the clergy are, of course, men of draft age, some of whom even managed to serve in the army before assuming office. The Russian Orthodox Church did not receive, nor even attempted to obtain postponements or respites for its clergy. Bishops began to circulate letters in their dioceses suggesting, like Metropolitan Arsenii of Lipetsk and Zadonsky, that clergy should negotiate with local draft boards to be used in the army as "non-combatants."
According to the canons, Orthodox priests cannot shed blood. For example, if a priest was driving and had a fatal accident, he is forbidden to continue his ministry. Historian Nadezhda Belyakova pointed out that one of the points on which Stalin and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had agreed during World War II was the "recognition of the special status of clergymen": if they had been registered with the state authorities, they were not drafted. No such agreements exist under Putin, despite the unwavering loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church and its ideological service to the authorities. A hotline employee who answers citizens' questions about mobilization told the RBC correspondent that “all citizens of the Russian Federation who are in the reserve of the armed forces are subject to mobilization. If a monk holds a military ID card in his hands, then he is in reserve. […] He is a Russian citizen like everyone else.” The Ryazanskie Novosti newspaper asked the same question about priests and received a response, “If a priest is on the military register, anything is possible.” It is not yet known what happened to the priests who had been called up. There are also no known cases of priests fleeing abroad and leaving their place of service.
Almost identical images are repeated in numerous photos and videos taken in different regions during the enlistment into the army: priests bless those who go to the front. They spray holy water, distribute crosses, icons, prayer books, and gospels and say farewell words. The priest's participation has become part of the ritual of going to war as if there were a new rite of passage in Russia. “Everyone has icons, prayer books, and there are chaplains on the front lines. With God's help, we will win," Russian actor and State Duma deputy Dmitry Pevtsov said at a meeting with the mobilized. Many priests post photos of the recruits on social media and write messages supporting the Russian army.
Some dioceses have announced that money had to be collected in the churches for "aid for the soldiers who are now defending our homeland". Metropolitan Evgeny of Yekaterinburg, for example, blessed such a "basket collection" after Sunday liturgy. It is understood that the money from ordinary parishioners will be used to "buy things needed in daily life and on the battlefield.” It is as if a militia was being assembled rather than a regular army that has to be funded from the state budget. And in Kaliningrad, the clergy called on the faithful to pray about the war and fast for ten days, and at the end of this fast come to a special prayer service in the cathedral.
clergy for the war
Among the clergy, there are those who travel to the front and occupied territories during the war months and publicly agitate for the war in the media. They pray in the churches for the victory of the Russian army, "bless those who mobilize into the war zone," and compose prayers "for Russia and its army". One of the most active is Archpriest Alexander Timofeev, who used to be known as an expert on biblical history, theologian, and a lecturer at the Moscow Theological Academy. In addition to traveling to the war zone, he maintains a Telegram channel about it and regularly provides commentary for the Orthodox Spas TV channel and other media outlets. "Novorossiya is now a bleeding outpost of the Russian world, Holy Russia, of which you and I are spiritual citizens," he writes. In the Telegram photos, he is seen ministering along with other priests in basements and gymnasiums in the occupied territories, blessing soldiers in camouflage clothes, administering communion, and confessing the wounded in hospitals. “Our boys who received communion at the liturgy yesterday are fighting near Krasny Liman. After confessing and receiving communion, they immediately put on their helmets and body armor and set out for their positions,” Archpriest Alexander Timofeev wrote of the days when the Russian army was retreating in the Donetsk region.
These priests who accompany the army units but have no special training, such as military journalists, seriously risk their lives. For example, Archpriest Evfimiy Kozlovtsev of the Orenburg Cossack Army, who had five children, was killed on September 25. Anatoly Grigoriev, a priest from Tatarstan, was killed two weeks earlier. No details are given of their deaths, except that they were with their band of Russian soldiers, in one case Cossacks, in the other the Tatar battalion Alga.
The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church either stay silent or fully support the war. Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov, one of the most influential bishops and a personal friend of President Putin, claims that "Ukraine has taken the path of Nazism," and the Russian military surprised him because "despite all the trials, torture, murder, that took place around them, there was no hatred in them. This is the reality of fulfilling Christ's commandments.” Bishop Savva (Tutunov), one of Patriarch Kirill's cronies, runs a Telegram channel where he regularly comments on war-related news and information (like the “homecoming” of Donbass) and shares military-patriotic blogger posts in between condemning the West for gay parades and Russophobia. Metropolitan of Klin Leonid (Gorbachev) posted a video of the taunting of Ukrainian prisoners on his Telegraph with a snide comment. After the announcement of the annexation of the occupied territories, he wrote that it was "a powerful speech by the President, a Russian citizen and a Christian. It is Vladimir Putin who today is the guarantor of the international path of decency.” After mobilization has been announced Metropolitan Mark of Ryazan said, “We see how other countries arose [against us]… If such a decision is made, then it is God's will and with pain in the heart something must be done for the homeland.” And Bishop Pitirim (Tvorogov) of Skopin and Shatsk reported: “The front is hell, but our soldiers go to heaven through it.” In his opinion, “mobilization is salvation for men who have lost their purpose in life but now they can become martyrs. […] And there is no need to be afraid, not everyone will die, but those who die will be heroes and everyone will be proud of them. And public opinion should be such as to despise the people who are cowardly.”
Priests Against the War
Andrei Shishkov, a researcher at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Tartu, believes that the Russian Orthodox priests, bishops, and monks who are blessing the war fall into two categories in their attitude to the events: “the cynics and the blind. The former know that they are serving evil, but they do it in exchange for various benefits for themselves. The latter do not know where they are going and are leading people into the abyss. But, according to Shishkov, there is a third, more numerous group of pastors, those "who think their conscience is clear because they do not bless anyone for war, they even pray for peace. But in reality, these pastors are helping to normalize evil. They help to obediently accept whatever comes from the lawless authorities.” They are in fact the majority in the Russian Orthodox Church. It also corresponds to the division in Russian society as a whole: there are cynics – civil servants, politicians, and propaganda workers who profit from the war, genuine “patriots”, of whom there are not that many but who are very active, heavily ideologized, even obsessed and supporting the war with action, and a huge mass that is "outside politics" and generally "pro-peace" but inactive and silent. The mobilization is undermining this construct, as those “outside politics” are now being dragged into politics literally under the threat of death, but the consequences are yet to be seen.
But both in society and among the clergy there is another small group: those who oppose the war and risk falling under the repressive machine of the state. And in the case of the clergy, it is a double threat: they risk reprisals both within the church and from law enforcement.
After the war broke out, priest Ioann Burdin, rector of the Church of the Resurrection in the Kostroma region, gave an anti-war sermon that was heard by ten people. One of them informed the police, and the priest was prosecuted under an article for discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. He was fined, but the Russian Orthodox Church was more brutal than the Russian court. It stripped Father Burdin of his parish and expelled him from ministry. Kirov priest Dmitry Baev has been put on the federal wanted list for publishing "knowingly false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens." Metropolitan Mark of Vyatka banned him from service and tried him before the church. The former priest left Russia. In his Easter sermon, Father Maksim Nagibin from Krasnodar had called the war in Ukraine a crime and a “great disgrace”, after which he was accused and a case opened “for discrediting the army.” An administrative charge has also been filed against Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev, who opposes Patriarch Kirill, for making anti-war statements. He now faces arrest.
In early March, shortly after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, almost 300 clergymen from the Russian Orthodox Church signed an open anti-war letter. "We respect the divine freedom given to men and believe that the Ukrainian people should make their own decision, not under the barrel of the automatic weapons, and without pressure from the West or the East," read the letter, which ended with "Stop the war!” These 300 signatories are truly courageous. It is known that the Russian security services have expressed interest in many priests who have signed open letters in the past (most famously in 2019 in defense of the prisoners in the so-called "Moscow case", those arrested at the protest rallies calling for fair elections to the Moscow Duma). They were summoned for talks with the FSB and relayed the threats through the bishops. For provincial priests, the consequences could be catastrophic. The same happened to some of the signers of the anti-war letter. The first signature on this letter belonged to the hegumen Arseniy (Sokolov). At the end of March, he made some notes in his Telegram channel: "Woe to those who call fratricidal war a peacekeeping measure!", "Praying 'to the glory of Russia' or any other country (and not to the glory of God) is pure idolatry", "The homeland is herded into a prison camp. […] What will we, the pastors of the church, be in this camp? Prisoners or Guards?”. The Telegram channel was closed a day later, and hegumen Arseniy was removed from his position as the representative of the Patriarch of Moscow to the Patriarchate of Antioch and recalled to Moscow.
A father took his son to a priest near Moscow and asked for his blessing "to go and defend his motherland." The priest replied that he could not give his blessing because "this war is unjust, we ourselves have invaded the territory of a foreign country.” And the only blessing he could give was to "keep yourself from cruelty and stay human.” This priest bitterly said afterward that he could not say directly that it was better to evade and go to prison or flee to another country than to be guilty of someone else's death and die, because this father and his son were strangers to him and could denounce him.
Archpriest Andrei Kordochkin, who serves at the Saint Mary Magdalene Orthodox Church in Madrid, has openly opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the beginning of the war and has directly criticized President Putin. “The 'Russian world' is a doctrine that is not only wrong but also dangerous. In relation to Ukraine, it sounds like this: “You as a people do not exist, your statehood is a misunderstanding, and since we are you, we will decide your future for you”. Since this goal is unattainable in reality, it is impossible to win the war. Even if we see the suppression of the resistance in Ukraine, strategically the war is already lost and there is no way to wash away the shame," he told Deutsche Welle. At the end of August, he was dismissed from his post as secretary of the Spanish-Portuguese Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, a punishment that so far seems very lenient. However, the priest has not been silent and continues to witness against the war. He recently published the text of a "Prayer of the People in Sorrow" that he had written. It says, for example: “Our princes lead our men and young men like sheep to the slaughter, but they have mercy and pity on their own children. As you yourself, Lord, fled to Egypt from the hand of the almighty Herod, the righteous Joseph, and your most pure mother, so now our men and young men flee to the lands of Georgia, Kazakhstan, all lands from the rising sun to its setting (Ps. 112:3) and even to the ends of the earth". The theological and literary level of this text far surpasses the "Prayers for the Russian Wars" recited by patriotic clergy.
The seven months that have passed since the beginning of the war have shown that the Church has indeed "mobilized". She is a voluntary propagandist, has voluntarily placed herself at the disposal of the state, and suppresses any dissenting opinion within her by showing solidarity with the repressive state apparatus. In return, it receives bonuses in the form of presidential grants and various forms of indirect support, although it does not cost the country as much as TV stations and other media resources. At the same time, the mood and views of the clergy, on average, reflect the distribution of positions within Russian society and its flock. However, unlike their parishioners, clerics who think differently cannot usually leave Russia, to avoid persecution and conscription - there are no “work from home” priests. They can only stay and wait with everyone else for a resolution from which the Russian Orthodox Church is unlikely to emerge unscathed.
For further analysis of the implications for the Orthodox Church of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, watch for the upcoming Summer issue of The Wheel.