Translated material
...such is the arrival
After the change of power in Hungary, the EU plans to subject Patriarch Kirill and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church to sanctions. Moscow expressed a strong protest
Patriarch Kirill. Photo: Sergey Bulkin / TASS
The official speaker of the Moscow Patriarchate, and more recently also the personal press secretary of its head, Vladimir Legoyda, spoke in mid-May with a “strong protest” against the European Union’s intentions to subject Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) to personal sanctions. An outstanding representative of the Russian establishment, without whom it is impossible to imagine the ideology and practice of the “Russian world” and the “sacred war” against the “brotherly people”, which Mr. Gundyaev either considers or no longer considers to be his God-given flock.
It is noteworthy that the EU leadership has not officially announced the upcoming inclusion of the Holy Name in the 21st package of sanctions against the Russian Federation, which will be adopted in June-July. Preliminary leaks about such plans appeared in Politico and The Telegraph. But judging by Legoyda’s expression, this was enough to cause alarm in the 79-year-old patriarch.
The alleged ban on doing business and entering EU countries, where Kirill has not traveled since 2022, is called “the height of absurdity” by his press secretary. It turns out that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who blesses all actions of the Russian Armed Forces, is a “humanitarian bridge” between the parties to the conflict. The fact that only one-way traffic is possible on this bridge is evidenced by the fact that for 4 years and 3 months Kirill did not express a single (!) condolence in connection with the death of Orthodox laity and clergy in Ukraine. At the same time, any train accident or earthquake in the most remote corners of the world resonates with pain in the patriarchal heart, giving rise to touching condolences in a special section of the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Legoyda recalls the “millions of followers” of Patriarch Kirill around the world and appeals to the “principles of freedom of conscience”, which, as is easy to see, in Russia itself are not included in the list of “traditional spiritual and moral values”, brutally persecuting “different believers” - Jehovah’s Witnesses*, “alternative” Orthodox Christians, charismatics, etc.
The authoritative British newspaper The Telegraph recalls repeated attempts to add Kirill to the pan-European sanctions list, which were invariably blocked by the former head of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Now this obstacle is gone, and other European “friends of Russia,” such as Slovakia, do not intend to stand up for “Putin’s altar boy” (as Pope Francis called Kirill).
During the first 13 years of his patriarchate, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church developed the doctrine of the “Russian World” , which justifies the revival of the Moscow-centric empire, and since the spring of 2022 he has been actively involved in the sacralization of the Northern Military District. Already in the fall of the same year, on the platform of the World Russian People's Council (VRNS), the Patriarch proclaimed the Northern Military District a “holy war,” and declared the Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine to be holy martyrs (analogous to Islamic martyrs), whose sacrifice “washes away all sins.”
At the most recent ARNC at the end of last year, Kirill casuistically argued why the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine do not violate the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”: “When evil takes the lives of people, when the enemy threatens the lives of old and young, women and children, then inaction is unacceptable... Whoever stands up for the defense of the Fatherland, saving the lives of the weak and defenseless, is the one who fulfills the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!”.” The patriarch did not explain why this logic does not work in the opposite direction, that is, does not justify the actions of Ukrainians.
The creativity of Kirill’s team in inventing the “religious meanings” of the SVO suggests that such “meanings” are in demand at the top - without them, Russian propaganda would be incomplete.
This fact was noticed a couple of years ago by PACE: on April 17, 2024, the assembly adopted resolution No. 2540 , in which Kirill and his patriarchy are accused of developing a doctrine declaring the North Military District a “Russian holy war” against the “satanic West.” PACE characterizes this doctrine as “violence against religion and a gross distortion of the Christian Orthodox tradition,” and the Russian Orthodox Church as “a proxy of the regime of Vladimir Putin.”
The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is indeed increasingly positioning itself as officials in the state service, as the patriarch clearly expressed in his Christmas interview this year . He called the existence of the Russian state an absolute priority and called for putting in prison people with other priorities - “traitors to the Motherland.” On the initiative of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, clergy who even hinted at their pacifist position, which actually corresponds to the commandments of the Gospel, such as “blessed are the peacemakers,” were subjected to canonical punishment (defrocking). In the first three years of the SVO alone, at least 47 clergy, including such famous ones as Fathers Alexy Uminsky, Andrey Kordochkin**, Andrey Kuraev**, Kirill Govorun, were subjected to church punishments, while 23 clergy were also brought to administrative or criminal liability.
The Patriarch also involved the clergy in direct participation in the military conflict, insisting on “rotational” business trips for clergy from all Russian dioceses to the Northern Military District zone. According to the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences , at the beginning of last year at least two thousand clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church had already visited this zone. Increasingly, publications appear in the Russian press about altar servers, monks and even priests who have taken up arms, after which, contrary to all possible canons, they return to the priesthood.
Taking advantage of the situation, the Russian Orthodox Church revived the institution of military priests, appointing a protopresbyter of the RF Armed Forces and the chief priest in the Northern Military District zone (he became a graduate of the Yu.V. Andropov Military-Political School, Archpriest Dimitry Vasilenkov). Since the 2024/25 academic year, all theological schools (seminaries and academies) of the Russian Orthodox Church have taught “Fundamentals of training clergy for serving in a combat zone.” As Novaya wrote , the course program is based on the ideas of the same Vasilenkov’s book “From Death to Life... In War. Password Donbass".
Guided by magical ideas about the energies accumulated by miraculous icons, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church began to “mobilize shrines” with the aim of redirecting their energy to “victory in the Northern Military District.” Such masterpieces of ancient Russian and Byzantine art as Andrei Rublev’s “Trinity” and the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God were removed from the Tretyakov Gallery and placed in existing churches, in conditions that threatened their physical existence. But either the patriarch’s teaching about energies is erroneous, or he does not know how to control them - all this does not have any effect on anything. Acts of sacralization were also the transfer of various shrines by Kirill to the troops: the August Icon of the Mother of God to the commander of the National Guard Zolotov and the Lugansk Icon of the Mother of God to the 3rd combined arms army of the “South” group of troops.
In addition to the SVO as a whole, Kirill also sacralizes the personality of its initiator and commander-in-chief Putin: in the prayer books published by the patriarchy for soldiers, he is called the “archistratigus,” that is, the leader of the heavenly army.
The Patriarch made it a rule in every (!) sermon, on the occasion of any church holiday, to call the president Orthodox, but the cult of the leader reached its apotheosis at a prayer service on the occasion of Putin’s inauguration on May 7, 2024, when Kirill predicted his reign until the “end of the century.” On the feast of Epiphany this year, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church exclaimed: “A miracle of God happened!” - of course, in the image of V.V. Putin, whom he directly called “leader” for the first time (the last time the Russian Orthodox Church awarded this title only to I.V. Stalin).
In the public agenda of the Russian Orthodox Church, the topics of the North Caucasus and Putin have completely replaced religious topics themselves: church holidays have become the backdrop for talking “about the main thing.”
Even people far from religion are beginning to feel that we are dealing not with a religious, but with a political organization. And it is in this context that the European Commission has already added the name of Kirill (Vladimir) Gundyaev to the sanctions list 14 times (starting with the 6th package of sanctions), each time running into a Hungarian veto. In the summer of 2023, Kirill awarded Viktor Orban a high award - the Order of Glory and Honor, 1st degree, but the bet on the eternity of his reign did not work. “Do not trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation” (Ps. 146:3), called the biblical king and prophet David, to whom even the patriarch should listen...
In the first months of the Northern Military District, in June 2022, Kirill’s confidant (and not only him), Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), who headed the “foreign” department of the Russian Orthodox Church for more than 13 years, was sent to Budapest from Moscow. Orban’s colleague at Oxford, Hilarion, in three months, bypassing, as the Hungarian media suggests, all legal procedures, received Hungarian citizenship and quite effectively defended the interests of the patriarch in the EU, until a scandal of a piquant nature broke out .
In the summer of 2024, a young cell attendant, Japanese citizen Georgy Suzuki, who fled from Hilarion, accused the bishop of sexual harassment, publishing video and audio evidence, including confidential conversations about the “shadow business” of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in Europe, their contacts with oligarchs and politicians.
Orban was the guarantor not only of Kirill’s non-inclusion in the sanctions lists, but also of Hilarion’s personal integrity. Now the demoted hierarch (he was exiled “to repent” to the resort town of Karlovy Vary) faces not only the revocation of his illegally issued Hungarian citizenship, but also deportation from the EU.
Kirill himself already has an impressive collection of sanctions. In June 2022, Lithuania banned the head of the Russian Orthodox Church from entering its territory for a period of five years. At the same time, the patriarch became prohibited from entering the UK for “explicit support of the Russian *** in Ukraine.” A month later, Canada included Gundyaev on its sanctions list along with TV presenter Ekaterina Andreeva. The Vatican did not impose sanctions, but abandoned previously scheduled meetings with him and generally minimized contacts with the Russian Orthodox Church. In September of the same year, at an assembly of the World Council of Churches, consisting mainly of Protestant churches, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sharply criticized the Russian Orthodox Church, which declared the will of God to be “imperial dreams of dictatorship rule.
In February 2023, the sanctions baton was picked up by Australia and New Zealand , and soon after them by the Czech Republic . As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the latter stated, Kirill “abuses faith.” In June 2023, Kirill was added to its sanctions list by Estonia , which called the head of the Russian Orthodox Church “one of the largest bearers and supporters of Putin’s ideology.” Later, the country did not extend the residence permit to the head of the Moscow Patriarchate structure in Estonia, Metropolitan Evgeniy (Reshetnikov).
…Church tradition ascribes a beautiful dream to Patriarch Kirill’s spiritual mentor, the legendary Soviet Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov). “We will live to see the time when Politburo meetings begin with the singing of a prayer,” he prophesied at a dinner in the mid-1960s. Nicodemus himself did not live to see this time - he died at a reception with the Pope at the age of 48. But his pupil lived, who seemed to have completely integrated religion, according to the Russian Orthodox Church, into politics, according to Putin. The dream, however, turned out to be not so beautiful...