QUESTION: There is no doubt that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crime against humanity. Apart from the pollical interest, does Putin aim for any religious reorientation of Ukraine and what is the position of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the present crisis? – Xavier Pappachan

ANSWER: Saji Mathew Kanayankal CST

As I pen down these lines, the illogic, brutal and devastating attack of Russia on Ukraine has been crossing two weeks. This tragic situation of the war in Ukraine has brought tremendous suffering, pain and loss of life and thousands and hundreds of civilians are trapped in Ukrainian cities. Europe witnesses a mass exodus of migrants without any parallels and as per the latest data of the UN, more than 2.3 million refugees have now fled to neighbouring countries. However, not only Ukraine but Russia also is badly affected by it. On February 24 alone, the day Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, around two thousand persons were detained in various Russian cities. The poverty, shortage and hoarding of food grains and bare necessities and different sanctions and regulations of the government make the situation worsen. Apart from it, the recent law passed by the parliament, ‘creating “fake news” on war as a crime,’ prevents media from reporting the facts and the international news agencies are restricted access to the country. This law penalises journalists and individuals with criminal charges if they post or repost any ‘content’ in social media. As Sergei Chapnin, the chief editor of ‘The Gifts’ says, “arrests, political assassinations, trials turned into a farce, torture of prisoners, suppression of independent media, pressure on lawyers and civil activists – all these seem incomparable to open-armed aggression, and yet it is a war that the Kremlin is waging hard and consistently against its people.” The situation in Ukraine is the worst humanitarian disaster and a human rights catastrophe in recent history. Even after the repeated requests of the world leaders, Putin refuses to listen to them and make many illogical, irrational and false justification for this brutal crime.

Manipulation of Religious Cravings
In spite of the political and military interests of Putin, the use of the religious identity of Russians for this invasion is an example of the perversion of religion for distorted politics. In fact, it is one of the tactics of many political leaders of our time! As many political critiques have already pointed out, the dream of Putin is not just to restore the scattered Soviet Union of the communist regime, but rather to re-establish the age-old great Russia of the Tsars. For Putin, Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one nation’ and he considers Ukraine as Russian heartland, spiritually as well as territorially. He claims that modern Ukraine is entirely created by Communist Russia, and it had lost its identity and became a mere puppet of the West. Through the present ‘military operation’ he visualises to regain the identity and glory of the ancient Russian Empire.
Russia and Ukraine are divided by a common history that traces back to the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus. When Prince Vladimir (980-1015) founded the first Russian Empire, a key ingredient was religion. He rejected paganism and adopted orthodoxy as the official religion of the country. Thus, the Orthodox Church (of Russia) became the official religion of the land and the concept of “Holy Russia Motherland” is emotively connected with the Orthodox Church. The splendour of the Church continued till Vladimir Lenin unleashed it through the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. After the end of the communist regime, the Russian Orthodox Church has been moving along with the political interests of the ruling governments and the Patriarchate of Moscow enjoys autonomy in the territory both politically and religiously.
Though Ukraine has its uniqueness in culture, traditions, ethos and identity as well as several expressions of eastern Christianity, it was part of the Russian Orthodox Church till 2019. The establishment of an independent Orthodox Christian Church in Ukraine with greater religious freedom, approved by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, was a matter of dispute with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I fiercely protested the move as illegitimate and it cut all relationships with the Ecumenical Patriarch.
The new Vladimir, Putin tactically uses the religious emotions, ideas and ceremonies mixed with national identity to establish his political whims. For example, to justify his seizure of Crimea in 2014, Putin used fabricated stories about the place of religion and calls the land a ‘sacred Russia.’ In his speech on last February 21, he justified the imminent invasion of Ukraine with a distorted historical narrative, claiming without proof that Kyiv was preparing for the ‘destruction’ of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Born as the son of a devout Christian lady (His father was an atheist who served former Russian dictator Stalin, but his mother was a devout Christian), Putin was baptised in secret and he was deeply connected to his mother’s belief and the religious ambience of his hometown, Saint Petersburg, in his earlier life. As the president of Russia, Putin mentioned many times about the glorious rebirth of moral purity and Christian culture in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church has been guiding Putin in re-establishing the Christian belief. On the other hand, by creating an impression that he could bring the Russian Orthodox Church back to its glory, he easily manipulated the developing “new religious syncretism,” that propagate the external, ritualistic and bombastic practises of some cultic celebrations with its exigencies of nationalist worship and discipline. This political religion- The Russian Orthodox nationalism – has helped Putin to overcome and suppress his liberal democratic dissents.

Religious Authentication to the Crime!
After the installation of Kirill I as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2009, the Church had strongly supported the dictatorship of Putin and encouraged his anti-western ideologies. In 2012 he called Putin a “miracle of God.” Some of the media even reported that Kirill was an active KGB agent (an officer) as his predecessor Alexi II, and both of them never apologised for what they have been in their past. In the World Russian Council meeting held on April 04 2006, Kirill called the human rights leaders in the west ‘dictators’ who force the people to accept gambling, euthanasia and homosexuality. According to the council, there are values “that stand no lower than human rights” and they are “faith, morality, sacred places and homeland.” On the day after he acceded to the Patriarchy, Kirill emphasised the concept of “Symphonia” in which a distinction is drawn between imperial authority and the priesthood. But the scholars argue that there is no evidence nor any successful example of symphonia in the contemporary history of the church. Moreover, during recent years the Russian Orthodox Church, which enjoys the official privileges of the Russian government, has been silent about any genuine moral issues that challenge the position of the government.
For the current conflict, the Moscow Patriarchate bears a good deal of responsibility because Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church give their loyal support and moral endorsement silently or explicitly to Putin for all his atrocities. Despite their nasty silence against Putin’s blatant violation of the international order, they have been the enthusiastic cheerleaders on his aggression toward Ukraine and supporters of separatists. In one of the statements at the beginning of the war, Kirill has called for an end to the “fratricidal” war in Ukraine, but he has not assigned blame for the conflict.
On the eve of aggression, February 23, when Russia celebrates the old Soviet holiday, Red Army Day, Kirill offered a long, nationalist sermon, wherein he warned about “many elements that threaten the peace of the county.” When he argues that the ‘borders of the Fatherland are the “sacred borders” of Russia which must be protected,’ he seems to be not bothered about ‘the borders of other countries,’ where he is revered as Patriarch. Less than 24 hours after these words, Putin has given the order to attack Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill remained silent all day long, and this silence was the most eloquent testimony to his moral collapse. In one of his statements issued a few days after the war, he justified the invasion and invoked the common historical roots of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The tepid remark of Kirill stands in contrast to the strong intervention of other leaders of different churches. For example, breaking all protocols, Pope Francis stepped outside his office and met the Russian ambassador and appealed to the government to stop the war. The Ecumenical Patriarch describes the unprovoked action of Russia as “a violation of human rights and brutal violence against human beings.” On February 24, Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issued a strong statement that called on Putin to end the war. Archbishop Stanislaw Gondetski, the Chairman of the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, in his letter to the Patriarch Kirill, implored him to ask Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the senseless fight against the Ukrainian people.’ Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, the acting general secretary of the World Council of Churches, wrote a heart-breaking letter to Kirill requesting him to intervene and to raise his voice and speak on behalf of the suffering brothers and sisters. Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, the famous Orthodox theologian writes: “Few, if any, would go so far as to claim that Patriarch Kirill, as head of the Orthodox Church in Russia, could be charged with crimes against humanity or war crimes for not preventing unwarranted and unjustifiable military aggression that has cost innocent lives in just the last few days. At the same time, many, if not most, would concur that President Putin should be charged with such atrocities.”
Apart from all these requests, on March 06, in his sermon before the Orthodox lent, Kirill depicted the war in spiritual terms, strongly supported it, describing it as part of a struggle against sin and pressure from liberal foreigners. Kirill pointed to the Ukrainian culture of promotion of gay rights as a specific example against God’s law. This is a deliberate attempt to provide a divine mandate for Putin’s notorious crime against humanity. Through this social moral discourse, Kirill approves many fake arguments of Putin for the war and gave a religious fabric to it. According to him, the war has a “metaphysical significance” than that of political or physical. For him. Some suffer due to the “fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power.”
Using the name of God, to justify the military aggression of another country and to legitimatise it with religious fabric is a shame and scandal to all faithful. It exposes his deteriorated vision of religion based on traditionalism, purity, and Russian authoritarianism. The tepidity and silence of the leaders of the Church at the face of crime and injustice, their quietness at the moment of imperial violence, and their collaboration with the manipulation of the political propaganda reveal their disregard for the evangelical commitment. When the church leaders lose their authenticity and prophetic gift and become mere intercessors of power holders, they prove that they are incompetent to such an office. It is indeed a crime against humanity and deception of the gospel.