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This piece was originally published at the Greek daily ΤΑ ΝΕΑ and has been republished by the Orthodox Observer in English with permission.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, as you will recall, apart from the “operation” of “denazification,” invoked the salvation of the “Russian world,” which is threatened not only by NATO but also by Western values that undermine “traditional Russian values.” Since then, four years on, Russian forces level cities and villages, destroy infrastructure, murder civilians, while standing by the war crimes being committed in Ukraine, devastating their own country as well — a country now filled with proxies of war and misery.
A fundamental pillar of the Putin regime is the Russian Orthodox Church. With the vision of the Third Rome as its core ideology — essentially an ethno-phyletist theory of supremacy — the Russian Church simply justifies the arbitrary exercise of secular power. It has consciously become a tool of that power. And of course, it sees its influence shrinking, having been transformed into a propaganda mechanism for a totalitarian regime and for the diversion of its war machine.
It is no coincidence, then, that yesterday Russia attacked with ferocity the Patriarchate of Constantinople and Patriarch Bartholomew personally. Patriarch Bartholomew is accused of his pro-Western stance — that is, he is accused of a democratic approach to the great issues of humanity. But Russia is not concerned with these matters. This is why its arguments are conspiratorial. It accuses Bartholomew of “relying on the ideological allies of the alliance, who are represented by local ethno-phyletists and neo-fascists” and of attempting “to detach the Orthodox Churches of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Moscow admits, once again, that its spheres of influence are shrinking — in other words, that things are not going well for its imperialist dream. It now accuses the autonomous activity of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, consistent with the pastoral role it holds in open societies. However, Russia is the one that used the Russian Church to create guardians who would support Russian interests in Orthodoxy, initially in Ukraine. Through military-style operations, supported by “Russian-speaking militias,” it undermined the local Church in an effort to create bridgeheads for today’s war. Who can forget the buses carrying “transferred faithful” who occupied parishes and monasteries, sowing division and subjugation to the Moscow throne? Who can forget the brutalities and the “monks” and “priests” of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian eparchy, who behaved with an ecclesiastical-colonial air? Who can forget the intrigues and the murders of Russians at the Holy Sites?
Are these behaviors not analogous to the role Moscow “played” in Antioch, where it established a parallel and antagonistic Patriarchate to the ancient Patriarchate of Alexandria’s Russian Exarchate, with the aim of undermining the flock in retaliation for the recognition of Ukrainian Autocephaly? Can the Patriarchate of Constantinople pretend not to see this and tolerate the games of a supposedly fallen imperial grandeur?
Let Russia understand that it is falling apart as it has sown. Its failure to subjugate Ukraine and its continuous attrition will have long-term consequences, and it will drink the bitter cup to the end. It would be absurd for the three Baltic countries to announce their choice of the Western democratic world while simultaneously remaining ecclesiastically attached to the Russian Church — which is an ideological mechanism and simultaneously a propaganda mechanism of the Putin regime. The altar boys, who until recently did Putin’s work, have missed the train.
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