[LINK] "How the Russian Orthodox Church answers Putin's prayers in Ukraine"

[rfmcdonald]

Gabriela Baczynska and Tom Heneghan's Reuters article explores the awkward position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, at once a quiet actor for the Russian state while trying to avoid alienating its parishoners in Ukraine.

When Russia sent its troops to Crimea, one of the justifications it used was an alleged threat to parishes there linked to Kirill's Moscow Patriarchate. Kirill's full title is "Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus," a reference to a medieval state in Kiev to which modern Russia traces its roots.

In Ukraine, Kirill oversees the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. It competes against a smaller church of the Kiev Patriarchate that split from Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Winning applause from those Ukrainians who seek Western integration and scorn Moscow's efforts to undermine it, the Kiev Patriarchate has strongly backed Ukraine's national cause in the current conflict. Its head, Patriarch Filaret, blamed Putin squarely for the violence and said he was possessed by Satan.

The conflict in Ukraine has put strains on the ties between the ROC and the state in Russia; and Kirill, wary of alienating worshippers in Ukraine by being too closely associated with the Kremlin, has increasingly hedged his bets.

He was conspicuously absent from a March ceremony where Putin sealed the annexation of Crimea, and he has not taken over two dioceses from the Ukrainian church in the peninsula even though they sit on territory now controlled by Russia.

Late last month, Kirill told a meeting with Orthodox media that it was “fundamentally wrong” to view the ROC as a vehicle of Russian state policy. But to many in Ukraine that sounded unconvincing, and controversy over the ROC’s role in the OSCE monitors’ case adds to that scepticism.