RIVNE, Ukraine – A priest applies green dye during Sunday service. Another stormed out of his western Ukraine church as police watched. A church was attacked by vandals, who filled the church with foam, plastered the walls with portraits of Stalin, and then set it on fire.
For centuries, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been a dominant spiritual force in the country. Now, the church is increasingly an object of distrust, largely because its spiritual leadership – at least until May – is in Moscow, not in Kyiv.
Government officials used to flirt with church leaders. Now, they openly talk about suspicions that some priests are collaborating with Moscow and worry that the broader church could be the Trojan horse for pro-Russian views and beyond.
Serhiy Kondrachuk, head of the Rivne regional council in central Ukraine, said when it comes to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, “we are not talking about divinity, faith or spiritual growth. “We can only talk about the greatest danger to our national security.”
The fact that the Orthodox church is now the focus of official suspicion is another example of how the war has profoundly affected every aspect of life in Ukraine. Even before the war, the issue of relations with Russia was a troubling one, between supporters of the church loyal to Moscow and supporters of the newer, similarly named Ukrainian Orthodox Church, based in Kyiv.
Now churches affiliated with Kyiv are actively pressuring priests in other churches to change their allegiance. Violent change broke out. Tensions were so deep that in May the Ukrainian Orthodox Church amended its canons to give itself “full independence and autonomy” from the Moscow church, the rift is creation of centuries-old relationships.
Even so, official doubts remain. In one example, at the end of June, the western city of Lviv held unanimous but symbolic vote ban church.
In the Ukrainian Parliament, Mykyta Poturaiev, a legislator, convened a formal session on the influence of the church. In an interview, he confirmed that authorities were investigating priests affiliated with the Moscow church for providing targets for Russian artillery; announcements about Ukrainian activists; and send data on the positions of Ukrainian troops.
“We understand how well prepared they are for the invasion of Ukraine,” he said, “and how many agents have been sent here and recruited.”
One case on the first day of the invasion, 24 February, resulted in the capture of a priest in a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, where a Russian helicopter was shot down. Police officials believe he was trying to help the downed pilots escape. Another priest from the Kyiv suburb of Borodianka is accused acted as informant to the Russian soldiers who occupied the now devastated town. In Rivne, the wife of a local priest was detained on suspicion of collaborating with the Russians.
Information about the cases is closely kept by the courts and intelligence agencies, which have managed to turn some of the suspected priests into informants. No clerics have been publicly convicted.
Kondrachuk, a local official in Rivne, displays the Javelin anti-tank missile case in his office and is lobbying for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to be banned in his area. At academic and religious events, he said, congregations openly espouse pro-Russian views. He cited a pre-war graduation celebration in which dozens of girls sang a song of “waiting for the glory of Holy Russia”, and a Sunday school festival in which children were Recommended to celebrate the Romanov dynasty of the Russian Empire.
“Ever since Ukraine became independent, Russia has been trying to bring its influence and values – culture, religion and otherwise – here,” he said.
When Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church remained loyal to Moscow, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was founded, loyal to Kyiv. Today, there are about 8,000 parishes loyal to the church based in Kyiv and there are still about 12,000 parishes loyal to the Moscow authority. But since the war began, hundreds of churches have switched to the Kyiv-based church.
Metropolitan Clement, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, denied any support for Moscow’s war goals and noted that church leadership had unexpectedly condemned the Russian invasion on the day it happened. out. Allegiance, however, remains unclear, as the church remains under Patriarch Kirill, the 75-year-old leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin and was a prominent supporter of the war.
Mr. Putin’s justifications for the war included conservative religious causes; he called Ukraine an “inviolable part” of Russia’s “spiritual space”. At the end of May, the church finally severed ties with Moscow, after hundreds of parishes switched allegiance to Kyiv.
“Their motives are mainly threats,” Metropolitan Clement said of the priests who switched sides. “It’s like when people come to your house, break the windows, paint the swastika. Or as in the Lviv region, a priest is adorned with vibrant green because he is ‘a collaborator’. What is his collaboration? Praying beliefs that he believes are true? “
Overall, however, Ukrainian officials say that priests make up only a small percentage of the more than 1,400 lawsuits filed against citizens for collaborating with the Russians. And Mr. Poturaiev, the Ukrainian lawmaker, acknowledged that the problem of traitors inside the church is individuals rather than a “systemic problem of the whole institution”.
But the distrust is still very real. An official with the Ukrainian Security Service, who refused to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that about 200 priests from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in “every region” of the country are under close surveillance. closely as potential collaborators. Aside from them, the official said, “virtually all” church priests are subject to some form of surveillance. The information could not be independently confirmed, but Metropolitan Clement acknowledged the pressure. “At least all church bishops are definitely under surveillance,” he said.
The accusations did not stop pilgrims from heading to the Monastery of the Caves, one of the holiest sites for Orthodox believers from around the world. After 1991, the Moscow patron continued to visit the site, while the Ukrainian government officially owned it as a museum. On a recent Sunday, parishioners and soldiers attended Mass.
Yuriy Horodiyenko, a 48-year-old military medic, made a pilgrimage to the ancient heart of the monastery, an underground crypt, with his right arm cast in a cast from a battlefield injury. He said he was baptized at the Cave Monastery and trusts the church leadership to decide its future.
“I am praying for Ukraine, for Kyiv, and there will be no war,” he said.
A soldier from the destroyed city of Mariupol, Serhiy Scherbak, said he had heard of personal collaborators affiliated with the church, but noted, “the church system itself is not guilty.”
But in the village of Hil’cha Druha, half an hour’s drive south of Rivne, a group of locals who had led their congregation in the transition of their church to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church proved to be the case. much more doubtful.
“We understood that without the Ukrainian church and our army, our state would not exist,” said Katya Tushkovts, who gathered her congregation to move churches after the local priest. There is an icon of the Romanovs, the last Russian royal family, said the church several years ago. When the Russian invasion began, she noticed a significant mass willing to make the switch.
The priest did not change with them.
After the group confronted him with a conversion request signed by a majority of the congregation, a supervising priest from the Moscow patriarchy went to the local rabbi to have their possessions removed from the building.
“The supervising priest got on his knees and cursed our village,” Ms. Tushkovts said. “He said he hoped not a single person here survived. What kind of priest is that? “
