It is no longer time to remain silent within the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church, but to give explicit and unreserved support to Vladimir Putin and Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. For the past two weeks, several Russian bishops have taken the floor to approve the military offensive in Ukraine ordered by the Russian president. This is a new fact, because during the first five weeks of military operations, Kirill, although fully behind the head of state, was the only one who officially spoke. Already on February 24, the Patriarch religiously supported the invasion of Ukraine, an operation that he says has a “metaphysical” dimension and is being waged against the “forces of evil” hostile to the unity of the people and the Russian Church.
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“It seems that we are dealing with a large-scale mobilization of the Russian episcopate, which supports the rhetoric of Vladimir Putin and also leads to an outcry to protect the patriarch Kirill,” explains Antoine Nivière, professor at the University of Lorraine, specialist in Russian cultural and religious history. The researcher links this wave of positions to the general takeover of society by the Russian authorities. He noted that since the beginning of April, several clear positions have been taken by religious leaders, as reported by Russian websites. One such frankincense is, unsurprisingly, Tikhon Chevkunov.
“Common Thought”
The metropolitan of Pskov, an ultranationalist who is said to be very close to Vladimir Putin and the FSB, Russia’s secret service, asked the faithful of his diocese on April 8: “Why did our president make such a decision with such serious consequences? (…) Based on the experience of my conversations with him, I can say that he would not have initiated it if he had not considered that there are reasons of vital importance, an imminent danger to the Russian people, which make this operation necessary . (…) If he had not done it now, but later, Russia would have been attacked, with the risk of having millions of casualties (…) Let’s recall the beginning of the Great Patriotic War [la seconde guerre mondiale] 1941 and the terrible casualties we had then. »
Bishop Sava, at the top of the central administration of the Moscow Patriarchate, objected to the idea that there would be pro and anti-war. “There is no such thing as a war party and a peace party,” he told Russia’s Interfax agency on April 7. There is no one who does not want to live in peace. But he added: “Do we need peace at the cost of Russia’s death, trampling on our ideals and ultimately the ‘peaceful’ annihilation of the Russian people? »
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