Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill has de-facto blessed Russian soldiers to die in Ukraine, promising them forgiveness of sins in his Sunday sermon on 25 September. Reiterating the Kremlin’s imperial myth of Ukraine and...
On 13 March, Patriarch Kirill blessed the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Guard Viktor Zolotov and bestowed him with the icon of Our Lady. On his part, Zolotov thanked the head of the Russian Orthodox Church: The icon “will...
Religion and primary Eastern Orthodoxy has been one of the most sensitive issues in Russian-Ukrainian relations, even amid a tangled knot of acute political, economic, and humanitarian contradictions. Church independence in Orthodoxy...
Diomid, who was Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) bishop in Chukotka before being stripped of that rank by the Moscow Patriarchate, has died in an automobile accident near St. Petersburg on November 20, 2021. Given that this occurred on...
The Georgian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church because it is concerned that if it does, the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) will annex as part of its canonical...
At a meeting of a Moscow conference on “World Orthodoxy: Primacy and Collegiality in the Light of Orthodox Doctrine,” the Russian church leader extended his criticism of Bartholomew ever since the latter granted autocephaly...
The Moscow Patriarchate is taking its battle against the Universal Patriarchate over Ukrainian autocephaly to a new level: it is seeking to organize Orthodox parishes in Turkey in order to set the stage for the creation of a new...
Specialists on religion in the Soviet Union have known for decades that many of the most senior hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church were KGB officers, but few Russians know much about this because the Kremlin hasn’t wanted to...
If Moscow continues to interfere with the march of Ukraine’s Orthodox to autocephaly, it could lose not only its church in Ukraine – there is no Russian church there now legitimately, a representative of the Universal...
The Trust, as a Chekist operation directed at and designed to disorder the anti-Bolshevik White emigration at the dawn of Soviet power, is today the model and prototype for Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Russian Orthodox Church...
In October 2022, a few weeks before the Ukrainian Army liberated Kherson, Russian soldiers parked several school buses next to the Regional Art Museum named after Oleksii Shovkunenko. Over four days, the invaders loaded their vehicles with...
