{"id":741,"date":"2026-08-17T04:11:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T04:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=741"},"modified":"2026-08-17T04:11:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T04:11:19","slug":"the-russian-churchs-war-on-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Church’s war on Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Women in white headscarves selling festive decorations, floral teacups, Orthodox icons and matryoshka dolls were once a familiar sight at Christmas markets across Europe. But ever since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Belarusian nuns behind these stalls have been a source of controversy rather than holiday cheer. In 2022, they were barred from selling their handicrafts at Winchester Cathedral once it emerged that they supported Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion. They took their lead from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who declared that Russian soldiers who fall on the battlefield will be washed of their sins. He\u00a0has silence published a book\u00a0on the \u201credemptive meaning\u201d of what he has called a \u201cHoly War\u201d.<\/p>\n

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As the fighting grinds on, the backlash against the pro-war nuns has continued. At a Christmas fair in the Polish city of Szczecin, Belarusian pro-democracy activists protested in front of the nuns\u2019 stall, accusing shoppers of \u201csupporting torture in Belarusian prisons and Russian aggression against Ukraine\u201d. Ukrainians in Belfast warned of the nuns\u2019 ties to the Kremlin and urged the city council not to host them again. Last Christmas, in the parish of T\u00e4by, a suburb of Stockholm, the rector allowed the nuns to flog their wares in the church corridor. But the Church of Sweden later warned that the nuns \u201cuse their income to support Russian nationalism\u201d and \u201chave close ties with GRU\u201d, referring to Russia\u2019s military intelligence service. It advised its believers \u201cagainst supporting their activities in any way\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Saint Elisabeth Convent in Minsk refutes such claims. On its website, it says money from the sales helps orphans and funds \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d for residents of Russian occupied Donbas. Yet Archpriest Andrey Lemeshonok, the convent\u2019s spiritual father, has made no secret of his backing of the invasion. He once boasted that his nuns were part of \u201ca combat unit\u201d, fighting for Russia\u2019s future.\u00a0Saint Elisabeth nuns, with flak jackets over their habits, have been photographed in occupied Ukraine and posing with Russian flags decorated with the pro-war Z symbol.<\/p>\n

Four and a half years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Kirill did not call for peace. Instead he called Russia\u2019s opponents in Ukraine \u201cevil forces\u201d, casting the war as a metaphysical battle against what he labeled the corrupting values of the West. Since then, his rhetoric has only hardened, sanctifying the bloodshed in Ukraine.\u00a0But his hawkishness is nothing new: a poisonous co-dependency between church and state has existed for centuries. Many of the patriarch\u2019s predecessors were under the Kremlin\u2019s thumb and in hock to the secret police. In Soviet times, not a single bishop was appointed without the blessing of the KGB. But today, more than ever before, the church acts as an instrument of Moscow\u2019s geopolitical power projecting influence, and posing a growing threat, across Europe.<\/p>\n

European security agencies increasingly view Russian church networks with suspicion. An\u00a0open-source investigation\u00a0by the Kyiv-based Molfar Intelligence Institute\u00a0in late 2024 concluded that the ROC \u201cconstructs\u00a0churches near strategic facilities, government institutions, and military bases across various European countries\u201d in a systematic effort to use religious outposts for espionage. In Bulgaria, Czechia, North Macedonia and elsewhere, \u201cspies in cassocks\u201d have been used as an alternative to diplomatic cover after the expulsion of Russian embassy staff following the invasion of Ukraine. In 2024, a priest from a Russian church in the Czech resort town of Karlovy Vary was expelled over suspicions of hostile activities. \u201cWe would be particularly foolish,\u201d\u00a0said one Czech MEP,\u00a0 \u201cif we did not recognize that Russia is undeniably using the Orthodox Church to carry out its hybrid warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s church has even tried to sway elections. Ahead of Moldova\u2019s 2024 presidential poll and EU integration referendum, Russian state officials funded\u00a0all-expenses-paid \u201cpilgrimages\u201d\u00a0to Moscow for dozens of Moldovan Orthodox priests and gave them debit cards loaded with hundreds of dollars as going-home presents. In exchange, the clerics were instructed to create channels on the Telegram messaging app warning against joining the EU.<\/p>\n

Moscow has also been quietly hoovering up strategic real estate. In Vard\u00f8, a remote Arctic town close to Norway\u2019s GLOBUS radar station, the Moscow Patriarchate\u00a0secured\u00a0local approval, and even Norwegian state funding, to build a chapel. Clergy from the nearby Russian diocese of Plesetsk and Kargopol, including its bishop, made frequent visits to Vard\u00f8 to unveil monuments to Norwegian partisans and consecrate Orthodox crosses. They said the chapel would serve Orthodox sailors and be a reminder of the cultural ties between Russia and Norway. But when the proposal was eventually submitted, the chapel had grown to 17 meters in height and, according to Vard\u00f8\u2019s current mayor, the Russian bishop insisted the exact location under Nato radars had been \u201cdictated\u201d to him \u201cby God himself\u201d. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and growing scrutiny of Moscow-linked institutions, the plans were shelved.<\/p>\n

But many Russian churches have been built in sensitive spots, including in neighboring Sweden. The Church of the Holy Mother of God of Kazan in the town of V\u00e4ster\u00e5s, west of Stockholm,\u00a0built and consecrated in 2024, is near a major airport, a water treatment works and a network of energy companies. Markus G\u00f6ransson, a researcher at the Swedish Defense University, felt it was too close for comfort. \u201cWhen Sweden\u2019s defense forces undertake exercises on or near the airport\u2026 they do so under possible surveillance from the church,\u201d he complained. Moreover, locals discovered that the plot of land for the church had been bought by Rosatom, Russia\u2019s state-owned nuclear corporation which also, through an intermediary, funded the construction. Last August, the agency overseeing non-state religion funding in Sweden cut off state subsidies to the V\u00e4ster\u00e5s parish citing security concerns.<\/p>\n

Finland, meanwhile, knows Russian pressure only too well. It shares an 833-mile border with its eastern neighbor, the longest in the EU. Decades of conflict and more recent hybrid tactics have fueled deep distrust. After the invasion, officials in the Finnish city of Turku moved quickly to close a Moscow-linked Orthodox church near a naval base, the port, government offices and Russia\u2019s consulate. Governments in other countries have also wised up. Following the open-source intelligence findings of the Molfar report, governments across Europe are responding with sanctions, security investigations and pressure on Moscow-linked churches to cut ties with the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

The issue is especially acute in the three Baltic states, where the Orthodox Church has become a flashpoint between a Soviet past and a European future. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are firmly anchored in the West through Nato and the EU, but all have sizable Russian-speaking populations, many descended from the Soviet era. Few attend church regularly, yet for many, Orthodoxy remains closely tied to Russian identity. In Estonia, where more than a quarter of the 1.4 million population are native Russian speakers, that makes the issue particularly sensitive. Parliament has now ordered Orthodox churches to sever ties with Moscow or face closure by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

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The sharpest confrontation to date in Estonia has been with\u00a0the P\u00fchtitsa Convent, which is a stavropegic monastery, meaning it comes under the direct authority of Patriarch Kirill rather than the local diocese. P\u00fchtitsa\u2019s abbess, Filareta Kalat\u0161ova, argues that the convent cannot unilaterally drop its subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate without breaking Church law. In an open letter to Parliament, she accused Estonian MPs of forcing her to commit a canonical crime. Though Martin Tulit, the Estonian official in charge of religious affairs, pointed out that the 134-year-old convent has changed its canonical affiliation before \u2014 including during the nation\u2019s period of independence between the two world wars.<\/p>\n

Outside Russia and occupied Ukraine, some Orthodox clerics who refused to follow Moscow orders eventually found they had other options. In January 2023,\u00a0 in Vilnius, Lithuania\u2019s capital, I met five unemployed priests who had been serving in a diocese linked to the Moscow Patriarchate but were defrocked for opposing the war. One had become a taxi driver to feed his family. The clerics were in limbo until the following year when Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople agreed to reinstate them under his jurisdiction. Not all the parishioners reacted well to the swap. Father Vladimiras Seliavko said many cold shouldered him and even relatives viewed him as a traitor but he \u201ccould not remain with a patriarch who blessed war criminals\u201d. Although the Orthodox have no Pope, the Constantinople Patriarch, based in today\u2019s Istanbul, is the closest equivalent. He is also known as the Ecumenical Patriarch and \u2014 much to Moscow\u2019s annoyance \u2014 is seen as\u00a0primus inter pares<\/em>:\u00a0first among equals and senior among all Orthodox bishops. Some Russian priests defrocked and forced into exile for refusing to read Kirill\u2019s mandatory Victory Prayer have also been transferred to Bartholomew\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

In northern Europe, Poland and the Baltics, where Catholicism and Protestantism dominate, Russia\u2019s church is widely seen as an arm of the Kremlin rather than a religious institution. The picture is very different in Orthodox eastern Europe, particularly in Serbia, Bulgaria and Georgia, where Moscow retains far deeper religious and cultural ties. Indeed, one of the challenges in countering the Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s political influence is the hold it still has over its believers and its propensity to treat any criticism as tantamount to religious persecution.\u00a0Last month, Bulgaria successfully blocked the European Union\u2019s attempt to sanction Kirill.\u00a0\u201cThe era of the Crusades is over,\u201d said the country\u2019s prime minister, Rumen Radev. He said he was wary of alienating millions of Eastern Orthodox believers. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is administratively self-governing but its patriarch, Daniel, has aligned himself with Kirill\u2019s position on the war. He warned his clergy against \u201cinciting hatred\u201d by labeling Russia as the \u201csole and unprovoked aggressor\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then there is the fraught question of the church in Ukraine. The establishment of the self-governing Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018, with the blessing of Bartholomew, was a slap in the face to Putin and his vision of the Russian World. But it was also a humiliation for Kirill. His Church, the biggest and the richest in the Orthodox world, stood to lose at least a fifth of its 150 million members, thousands of parishes and several hundred churches and monasteries. Nato encroachment aside, Ukraine\u2019s desire to cut ties with the mother church in Moscow, to which it has been linked for three centuries, became a\u00a0casus belli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disagreements over which Orthodox church in Ukraine is the most legitimate have not gone away. Even today, as bombs rain down on Ukrainian cities, many parishioners are reluctant to change jurisdictions to the autonomous Orthodox Church of Ukraine. They believe that it is uncanonical and that joining it means that they will be deprived of divine grace. This agenda is relentlessly pushed by the Kremlin. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, hardly an authority on matters ecclesiastical, routinely invokes \u201ccanon law\u201d to condemn Ukrainian and Western action against the branch of the church historically linked to Moscow.<\/p>\n

Such talk leaves parishioners particularly open to manipulation. \u201cThe church is very convenient for dictatorships\u201d, says Father Vladimiras, one of the five Lithuanian priests defrocked by Moscow, \u201cbecause any propaganda can be spread through its channels. Believers are accustomed to trusting their clergy and rarely doubt the statements of their patriarch, bishops or priests.\u201d\u00a0Recent reports\u00a0in the Ukrainian media suggest Orthodox parishes in Western Europe are being used to recruit Ukrainian refugees. It is not clear how these refugees would be deployed,\u00a0but it\u2019s not unimaginable they could become Russian intelligence assets.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Cold War, Soviet propaganda relentlessly targeted Uncle Sam. Now, Europe has morphed into Russia\u2019s main enemy. And the Russian Church is key to Putin\u2019s plan to destroy European liberal democracy and the institutions underpinning it. According to Kirill, the continent is mired in moral decay thanks to its acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights; Orthodox politicians and talk show hosts often use the pejorative term \u201cGayropa<\/em>\u201d instead of Evropa.<\/p>\n

The war has given the Patriarch a chance to reassert his authority in a post-Soviet world as he championed the twin causes of Orthodox unity and Russian imperialism. Since the Western world \u201chas fallen into Satanism\u201d,\u00a0in Kirill\u2019s view, Russia functions as the\u00a0Katechon<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the biblical force that restrains the Antichrist. In a recent sermon he praised Russia\u2019s atomic bomb for thwarting its enemies plans to\u00a0\u201cto destroy and enslave the Motherland\u201d.\u00a0In other words, massive military destruction is justified as an act of cosmic purification.<\/p>\n

Europe may now have to confront this increasingly aggressive alliance of \u201cthe missile and the incense burner\u201d, as one French theologian put it, with little help from across the Atlantic. If previous US administrations made equality for sexual minorities a pillar of American diplomacy, Donald Trump\u2019s National Security Strategy, published last November, puts \u201ctraditional values\u201d at its heart instead.\u00a0On a trip to Texas last year for the BBC, I was struck by how some ultra-conservative Americans now see Russia as a Christian bulwark \u2014 even a model to emulate. The strategy contains little criticism of Moscow despite the mounting death toll, while voicing support for \u201cpatriotic parties\u201d, several of which enjoy the Kremlin\u2019s favor and, in some cases, the backing of its pliant church. For a continent already facing a resurgent Russia, Europe\u2019s isolation on this issue is an uncomfortable prospect and one it can no longer afford to ignore.<\/p>\n

Read more Eric Hobsbawm\u2019s age of contradictions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women in white headscarves selling festive decorations, floral teacups, Orthodox icons and matryoshka dolls were once a familiar sight at Christmas markets across Europe. But ever since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Belarusian nuns behind these stalls have been a source of controversy rather than holiday cheer. 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