The Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill I, has much in common with Vladimir Putin. Both were born in Leninard, today St. Petersburg. And they both worked for the KGB secret service in Soviet times. While Putin has never made this past a secret, documents in the archives incriminate Kyrill. The 75-year-old never commented on this, but apparently he was the official “Mikhailov”. This also explains why he was already able to rise in orthodoxy in Soviet times, when he became Archbishop of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.
Kyrill comes from a family that suffered from the reprisals of the Soviet Union. Even his father was a priest-and he was kidnapped in the Stalin era for three years in the Gulag.
His son, whose real name is Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, brought the Orthodox Church and State closer to what it has been since the tsarist empire. Kyrill himself speaks of a “symphony” of State and Church.
The patriarch has long been a loyal servant of Putin: he once described his presidency as a “miracle from God”, criticized the opposition and called for Putin’s election. He, in turn, made donations to the church, as evidenced by the numerous church buildings that have been rebuilt or glowing in new splendor.
Cyril is also very close to the Kremlin and ideologues linked to the regime, such as the philosopher Alexander Dugin: the ecclesiastical is ultra-conservative, anti-liberal and anti-Western. The West promotes sin with its rights for homosexuals, destroys the family with currents like feminism, which in turn threatens to destroy the homeland.
With correspondingly nationalist undertones, he also advocates the war in Ukraine, which he gives a religious superstructure: This is a “metaphysical battle of good versus evil,” he preaches. Russia is on the light side and wants to protect Ukrainians from the diabolical influences of the West, which wants to expose Ukrainians to gay parades and incite them against their Russian compatriots.
Kyrill denies Ukrainians the right to statehood. Instead, he preaches the concept of “Russki Mir”, the “Russian World”, according to which Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are one people. This, in turn, corresponds entirely to Putin’s imperial ambitions.
As a result, Cyril is isolated within Christian churches: the Catholic Church is “shaken” and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, has renounced it.
Personal wealth is estimated at four billion dollars
And for the EU, Kyril’s support for the Russian war of aggression was the reason it initially put him on the sanctions list, which Hungary did not agree with. One way or another, Kyrill will not be impoverished: he is also called the “patriarch of tobacco” because he is said to have traded tobacco and oil when the church was allowed to do business again after the end of the Soviet Union. According to Russian investigative journalists, his assets include a penthouse apartment and a luxury Mercedes sedan. His private fortune is therefore four billion dollars. (klh)