CNN —
The vertically rotated video released last November shows no weapons, atrocities on the battlefield, or even soldiers. But the sound of a patriotic Russian song echoing through a church on the grounds of Kiev’s famed Lavra Monastery seemed to open a new front in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
The church is owned by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – which despite the name is traditionally loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church and whose current leader, Patriarch Kiril, has openly supported the brutal invasion of Moscow. The UOC leadership split from Kiril, condemned Russia’s attack and declared its independence from Russia last May.
In a sermon days after the split, Patriarch Kiril said he prayed that “no temporary external obstacles will ever destroy the spiritual unity of our people.”
Days after the video surfaced, masked members of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) raided the Lavra – officially to prevent it from being used to “hide sabotage and reconnaissance groups” or “store weapons”.
By December, a handful of church leaders had been sanctioned, and dozens more churches across the country were searched by the SBU — although the searches turned up little more than a few Russian passports, symbols and books.
“Weapons or saboteurs were not mentioned in the finds. What they said, they found printed matter, documents that are not prohibited by Ukrainian law,” UOC Bishop Metropolitan Klyment said in an interview with CNN.
However, there are many gray areas. In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told CNN that it is not illegal to store Russian propaganda, but to disseminate it. “When such literature is in the diocesan library or on the shelves of a church store, it is obvious that it is intended for mass distribution,” the statement said.
She insisted that the raids on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “are aimed solely at national security issues. It’s not a question of religion.” However, Vladimir Legoyda, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, called the raids an “act of intimidation”.
Professor Viktor Yelenskyi, the newly appointed Observer of Religious Freedom in Ukraine, said that for more than 30 years the UOC leadership has been “poisoning people with the ideas of the Russian world”. He defended the SBU crackdowns, comparing them to post-9/11 crackdowns on Islamic extremism. “Ukraine is still a safe haven for religious freedom.”
But in late 2022, the government refused to renew the church’s lease on its massive, central Lavra Cathedral, handing over the keys to the similarly named but entirely separate Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Rival OCU celebrated Orthodox Christmas Mass there for the first time this year (on January 7).
Alla, who declined to give her last name, said outside the church on Christmas Day: “I think it should have happened a long time ago.”
“We tolerated that [UOC] angry and closing our eyes thinking we should be tolerant, but the war has brought it all to the surface.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church held this year’s Christmas mass in a smaller church just a few steps from the cathedral. Kyrylo Serheyev, a student at the Lavra seminar, said he prayed especially for the Ukrainian troops this year. And despite government sanctions and scrutiny of his church, he insists “our patriotism is not diminishing.”
Viktoria Vinnyk said she was sad that she didn’t have a mass in the central cathedral this year. Although she speaks Russian, she has never been to Russia.
“I hope for improvement in my country. And I hope that the situation will change,” she said.
The cathedral is not the only sacred site changing hands. Outside of Kyiv, in the village of Vita Poshtova, a small church has stood on a hill above the frozen lake since Soviet times. It’s the only one in the village. In September, the congregation voted to convert the church from UOC to the independent OCU. Community member Olha Mazurets says she is uncomfortable with any connection to Russia.
“It’s about identity and self-preservation. We also need to identify our enemy,” she told CNN.
Father Pavlo Mityaev, the newly appointed priest, says before the war: “People didn’t pay attention to whether it was a Ukrainian or Russian-speaking church, they came to God. But when the war started, everything changed.”
According to Klyment, as many as 400 of the UOC’s 12,000 churches in Ukraine have converted to the OCU since the start of the war.
The security services say that since the start of the full-scale invasion, 19 church ministers have been charged and five convicted.
In December, UOC priest Andriy Pavlenko was sentenced to 12 years in prison for leaking information to the Russians about Ukrainian battlefield positions in Donbass. A week later he was sent to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange.
Klyment acknowledges the priest’s guilt but dismisses other cases – such as the Vinnytsia priest, indicted just this week for spreading pro-Russian propaganda – as empty allegations. He thinks the wider church is being unfairly tarnished.
“Members of the Ukrainian Orthodox … are citizens of Ukraine and are sometimes among the best citizens of Ukraine who prove their patriotism with their own lives,” he said, referring to UOC members fighting on the front lines.
In his nightly address on December 1, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated that he was ready to go beyond crackdowns and propose a law banning churches with “centres of influence” in Russia from operating in Ukraine – all in the name of “spiritual Independence”.
“We will never allow anyone to build an empire in the Ukrainian soul,” he said.
But Klyment believes the law would only push his church underground.
“What else do you call persecution if not that?” he asked.