Is Ukraine’s largest church still pro-Russian? , russia-ukraine war news

Khust, Ukraine – In Transcarpathia, the westernmost region of Ukraine, “Praise Jesus” is often heard instead of “Hello”.

Known for its piety, enchanting folklore, wild mountains and inventive smugglers, Transcarpathia used to be dominated by the Greek-Catholic Church which preserves Orthodox rites but considers the Pope as its spiritual leader.

Transcarpathia was never part of Russia until Soviet leader Joseph Stalin took it over in 1944, and imposed the Russian Orthodox Church, whose top clerics collaborated with the KGB, the main security agency of the Soviet era. Was.

Oleh Dyba, a publicist and scholar of the religious life of Transcarpathia, told Al Jazeera, “Soviet intelligence either forced all (Greek-Catholic) priests to convert to pro-communist Orthodoxy or executed them in Siberia.”

This is the second year Ukraine celebrates Christmas on December 25, after hundreds of years of celebrating it on January 7 according to the Gregorian calendar still used by the Russian Orthodox Church.

But nevertheless, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) remains the largest religious church in the country.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the world’s largest Orthodox Church, was one of those who collaborated with the KGB. A former KGB colonel, he remains Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ideological ally.

Kirill is accused of purging dissident priests, has described Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war”, and has said the sins of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine have been “washed away”.

“Russia is literally returning to the discourse of the medieval Crusades,” Andrey Kordochkin, an Oxford-educated theologian who left Kirill’s church to join the Istanbul-based Patriarchate of Constantinople, told Al Jazeera.

More than a millennium ago, Constantinople sent Orthodox priests to baptize Prince Vladimir of Kiev, a pagan Viking from whose kingdom would give rise to what are now Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.

The UOC was a large and essential part of Moscow’s religious empire, with thousands of parishes and priests.

Some of them espoused pro-Russian views after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass.

“Their priest refused to pray for my cousin who was fighting in Donbass in 2015,” Philip, a resident of the Transcarpathian village of Chinadievo, told Al Jazeera. “Since then, I have never set foot in that church.”

Meanwhile, separatists turned against pro-Ukraine clerics.

One of those targeted was Archbishop Afanasy, who suffered a mock execution in the rebel “capital” of Luhansk in June 2014.

He was blindfolded, made to stand against a wall and heard a bullet that missed him.

Afanasy told this reporter in 2018 that he left Luhansk in his wrecked car, whose brakes had been deliberately damaged by rebels.

UOC vs OCU

In 2019, Ukraine’s pro-Western government established the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which reports to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

However, despite persuasion, coercion and harassment of clerics, the pro-Russian UOC remains Ukraine’s largest religious organization.

It was officially separated from Moscow and helped the war effort by hosting refugees and collecting donations for humanitarian aid and drones and medical supplies.

But many of its leaders have been under attack for their real or perceived pro-Moscow sympathies.

Metropolitan Mark, a white-bearded 73-year-old man whose religious sphere is centered around the small Transcarpathian town of Khust, is one of them.

Over the past two years, he has been accused of possessing a Russian passport – along with two dozen top UOC clerics, and of building a $225,000 home in Sergiev Posad, a spiritual center outside Moscow, where he studied in the 1970s. Was.

Mark’s nephew, driver and deacon Volodymyr Petrovsky, faced desertion charges in October after deserting his military unit and allegedly saying he did not want to fight his “Russian compatriots”.

One of Metropolitan Mark’s clerics told Al Jazeera that the claims about the house and passport were false.

“I can tell you with all my heart that is not true,” Father Vasily said, standing inside the Khust cathedral, whose walls and ceiling were filled with depictions of evangelical scenes and icons.

However, he claimed that in 2018, popular comedian Volodymyr Zelensky had asked for UOC’s support ahead of the presidential vote.

Father Vasily said, without providing any evidence of this exchange, that Zelensky gained support after promising to convert to Christianity – but never kept his alleged “promise”.

“Since then, he punishes and persecutes us,” Father Vasili claimed.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify Vasili’s claims.

Ukraine’s main intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine, said in August that more than 100 UOC priests have been suspected of treason, collaborating with Moscow-appointed officials in the occupied territories and spreading Russian propaganda since 2022.

That’s when the Verkhovna Rada, the lower house of Ukraine’s parliament, banned the UOC in order to “strengthen national security and protect the constitutional order.”

‘It is quite risky to experiment with compatriots’

However, the move is extremely counterproductive, according to a German researcher who studied Ukraine’s religious life for decades and visited dozens of parishes.

Nikolay Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen said that far-right groups pressure the UOC to force surrender, take over parishes, and ignore their parishioners fighting on the front lines.

“It is quite risky to conduct this kind of experiment with our compatriots when Ukraine is losing on the battlefield,” he told Al Jazeera.

The pressure violates Ukraine’s Constitution and has attracted criticism from the collective West, putting the supply of military and financial aid at risk, he said, adding that the pressure would allow the Kremlin to lash out at “Kiev’s neo-Nazi junta.” And gives a perfect excuse to spread anti-Ukraine messages. , and appropriate parishes in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

On December 16, popular chef Ivan Klopotenko filmed a culinary show on traditional Christmas dishes in the canteen of the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, a huge religious complex in central Kyiv.

Most of the ancient complex belongs to the UOC.

The Kremlin responded to the news with predictable derision — and shared it with pro-Russian audiences in the former Soviet Union.

“They take over churches to turn them into circuses,” Nilufar Abdullaeva, a self-described “Russian patriot” who lives in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent, told Al Jazeera. “He lost all shame.”

The official ban on the UOC would only force him to go underground, Mitrokhin said, and he would “sooner or later emerge from there with the image of a martyr and a conqueror”.

Finally, the closure of parishes could damage and destroy thousands of historic buildings that require constant attention, repair, and heating during the harsh Ukrainian winters.

“After a while, graffiti and then catastrophic destruction of buildings begins,” Mitrokhin said. “Therefore, Ukraine will lose a large part of its cultural heritage.”