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Ukrainians Are Directing Their Anger at Their Church

As the Russian invasion carries on, Ukraine’s relationship to religion is becoming ever more strained.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

A church steeple stands in the sun by the Moscow River in Moscow.

May 22, 2023, 8:14 AM

Ukrainian soldiers carry fresh coffins containing their colleagues’ remains through a church aisle as a choir delivers heart-rending melodies: Funeral scenes like these are now routine in Ukraine as churches have become a refuge for the grieving since the start of the Russian invasion. But many Ukrainians draw a line at paying respect to priests and other church officials, whom they suspect of sympathizing—or worse, colluding—with the enemy.

Ukraine’s government is under pressure to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) since the Security Service of Ukraine uncovered Russian literature and passports from its monasteries and some of its priests were publicly seen blessing the invading army. The UOC-MP is one part of Ukrainian Orthodoxy: The Ukrainian church was given a separate status after the breakup of the Soviet Union but fell into two halves—one remaining directly loyal to the patriarch in Moscow, the other seeking autonomy and eventually being recognized as independent by the senior patriarchate of the world’s Orthodox Christians in Istanbul.

That festering sore had real consequences after last year’s invasion, which the current Moscow patriarch, Kirill, backed strongly, calling anyone who opposes the war “forces of evil.”

This war has a “strong religious tone,” said Tetiana Derkach, an authority on religious affairs in Ukraine and the author of Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine: Anatomy of Treason. She spoke at length with Foreign Policy and said that for the Russian leadership and the Russian church, it was a war for the “unity of the Russian people,” something like a “holy war” between the forces of light—represented by Russia—and the forces of darkness—represented by Ukraine and the West. “Religious messianism is always a powerful incentive for violence and wars,” she said.

But for Ukraine, it is a chance to gain spiritual freedom from the yoke of the Russian church and the power that Russian President Vladimir Putin exerts over it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his government would continue to undertake measures to obtain Ukraine’s “spiritual independence” after some priests of the UOC-MP were put under state sanctions. “There will be more steps. Ukraine will never stop halfway again,” Zelensky said in December.

According to a December poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 78 percent of Ukrainians believed that the state should intervene in the activities of the UOC-MP to one degree or another, while 54 percent advocated for a complete ban. Another 24 percent favored a somewhat “softer” approach, while only 12 percent said the government should not interfere in the church’s affairs at all and investigate only specific cases.

The Orthodox church is an umbilical cord connecting Russia and Ukraine and has been weaponized by Putin to further his imperial ambitions. Many Ukrainian analysts agree with the government’s charges that the UOC-MP’s parishes and priests have been used by Putin to brainwash Ukrainians, spreading the doctrine of “Russky Mir,” or a greater Russian world. The events of 2014, including Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, sealed the split in the church—with the breakaway factions establishing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), recognized by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in 2019—but it is Putin’s full-scale invasion that risks the future existence of the Moscow-affiliated church. The UOC-MP is quickly losing credibility among Ukrainians.

Derkach said that aside from actively corresponding with Russian politicians, some priests “even collected and passed on intelligence data to the Russians about the movement or location of Ukrainian troops” in the current invasion. In village and town churches, they gave spiritual instructions to Ukrainians “to hold fast to Russia and the Russian church” and portrayed Ukrainian statehood as a geopolitical mistake, a sin against “Holy Rus,” she added.

Last September, Metropolitan Panteleimon of Luhansk and Alchevsk attended the Russian ceremony that marked the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, including Luhansk. In Bucha, Mykola Yevtushenko, another UOC-MP priest, welcomed invading troops, offered them benediction, and pointed out Ukrainians who were most prepared to resist. The Sviatohirsk Monastery in Ukraine’s Donetsk region is reported to have sheltered aides of Russian soldier-spy Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, who played a key role in the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in the Donbas. Inside Crimea, UOC-MP clergy have been seen blessing Russian weapons and collaborating with Russian forces.

In a more recent case, the former governor of the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery, one of the most revered shrines of Orthodox Christianity, was charged with inciting religious hatred and glorifying Russia’s aggression. Even though Ukraine’s security services released a phone recording to back their allegations, Metropolitan Pavel defended himself, saying that charges against him were politically motivated.

“I would like Russia to leave us alone,” he is reported to have said to prove his loyalty. The UOC-MP last year formally disavowed the invasion and said it no longer took orders from Moscow, but few believe it.

“I am now in Ukraine,” Pavel said. “This is my land.” He was, nonetheless, placed under house arrest. He claimed he had been asked to switch affiliation to the OCU and that it had been hinted the case against him would be dropped if he obeyed.

Many Ukrainians, however, see it as their patriotic duty to leave the UOC-MP.

Igor Koltunov, a young Ukrainian journalist and deputy of the Kyiv Regional Council, said his parents practiced their faith at the UOC-MP but that he felt compelled to join the independent OCU. It was a “matter for survival for Ukrainians,” he told Foreign Policy from Kyiv.

The UOC-MP is not a church but a “police structure for controlling the thoughts and actions of gullible parishioners” who are told that Ukraine “must surrender” and that “it is not Russia that attacks us but … God’s wrath,” he said.

“It is quite natural that people do not want such sermons and have every right to change [their] priest, since the temple is the property of the community and not the real estate of the Kremlin in Ukraine.”

According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 18 percent of Ukrainians polled in 2021 identified as members of the UOC-MP, but by last July, a few months into the full-scale invasion, that number had fallen steeply to 4 percent. In the same time frame, the numbers of OCU members rose, from 42 to 54 percent. But the UOC-MP is still the biggest church in terms of parishes, with 12,000 across the country compared with the OCU’s 7,600. Experts say practical impediments, as well as spiritual blackmail by priests, make it harder for Ukrainians to easily shift their church affiliation.

“I have certain doubts that the faithful of the UOC-MP will leave their churches en masse,” Derkach added. “This is especially true in countryside, where there is only one place of worship for the whole village and believers do not have a choice where to pray.” Some priests are bullying and blackmailing their parishioners that they might lose divine grace and salvation if they leave the UOC-MP, Derkach said.

The Ukrainian government faces many challenges in reining in what it sees as fifth columnists. Firstly, each Orthodox parish is a separate legal entity, and it will be difficult if not impossible to ban each one. Secondly, the OCU does not exist abroad, while the UOC-MP does and is offering assistance as well as solace to Ukrainian refugees. Thirdly, an overreaction may be counterproductive. Not everyone doubts the loyalty of every UOC-MP priest or sees them as beholden to Moscow. These followers could follow their spiritual guides to their homes if their license to preach were canceled. Some experts worry about social tensions in Ukraine were those who follow the UOC-MP to revolt against the government.

Finally, curbing religious freedom may not sit well with Ukraine’s plans to join the European Union. In a meeting in January, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned against using religion to fuel conflict in Ukraine. Ilze Brands Kehris, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, drew attention to restrictions on freedom of religion in both Ukrainian territory controlled by the government and that occupied by Russia, but she specifically pointed to raids in churches by Ukraine’s security forces, criminal charges against a few priests, and “two recent draft laws that could undermine the right to freedom of religion.”

As well as publicly breaking its ties with Moscow, the UOC-MP has prayed for Ukraine’s victory and won praise for organizing humanitarian corridors to besieged Mariupol. But what it hasn’t done is criticize Patriarch Kirill. In late March, hundreds of UOC-MP priests demanded that the church’s management release written proof that it has severed ties with the Moscow Patriarchate and that it condemns Kirill. The final fate of the church may be decided internally.