Putin's Holy War And The Disintegration Of The "Russian World".1

Vladimir Putin and Alexander Dugin’s vision of “Holy Russia”, which is shared with the Russian Orthodox Church, sees Russia’s mission as being to expand its influence and authority until it dominates the Eurasian landmass by means of a strong, centralized Russian state aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church, championing “traditional” social values over against the cultural corruption of a libertine West.
The partnership between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been aimed not only at articulating this sacralized view of Russian national identity to the domestic audience, but also in advancing the mission of the Russian nation abroad. The manner in which the Russian state and the Church has been cooperating, however, is undermining their jointly-stated goal of building a “Russian world” that dominates Eurasia under Moscow’s benign imperial oversight.
The Church, for its part, acts as the Russian state’s soft power arm, exerting its authority in ways that assist the Kremlin in spreading Russian influence both in Russia’s immediate neighborhood as well as around the globe. The Kremlin assists the Church, as well, assisting in extending its reach. Vladimir Yakunin, one of Putin’s inner circle and a devout member of the ROC, facilitated in 2007 the reconciliation of the ROC with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (which had separated itself from the Moscow Patriarchate early in the Soviet era so as not to be coopted by the new Bolshevik state), which reconciliation greatly increased Kirill’s influence and authority outside of Russia. Putin, praising this event, noted the interrelation of the growth of ROC authority abroad with his own international goals: “The revival of the church unity is a crucial condition for revival of lost unity of the whole ‘Russian world’, which has always had the Orthodox faith as one of its foundations.”
Cooperation on Russia’s reach into the outside world has even become formalized by a joint working group that meets regularly and is made up of officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the ROC’s
Department of External Church relations (renovation of these ROC offices was paid for by another close Putin friend, Konstantin Malofeev, further illustrating Putin’s interest in cooperation with the Church internationally). Because the ROC has significant influence within the former Soviet states around Russia’s periphery through its branches in those neighbors, this fact of ecclesiology gives the Russian state political leverage over its neighbors in which the ROC plays a major role. This is why the Belarussian Orthodox Church, which currently answers to the Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, has appealed to Moscow for greater autonomy in terms of church governance. The issue is not so much church governance, but a desire for greater political autonomy from the Kremlin in light of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, a fact that both Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who is trying to distance himself from Putin’s vice like grip, and Vladimir Putin, both understand well.
While Kirill and the ROC hierarchy have strongly supported Putin, cooperation between the two outside Russia’s borders has given Kirill a few headaches in the past year or so as aggressive Russian actions have served to alienate many of the clergy and laity who lead and belong to Orthodox Churches of the Moscow Patriarchate within Russia’s neighbors. Making this worse is the perception that the Church has merely become the soft power arm of the Kremlin, and evidence that the ROC has been closely cooperating with Putin on Ukraine in particular. As one example, the Church has been willing to act on the Kremlin’s behalf in wielding Russian influence over the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Last year, when the rebels were convinced to release the OSCE observers they had captured, it was the ROC that negotiated for their release, allowing the Kremlin to continue to pretend that it had no relationship with the rebels.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate, the branch of the ROC in Ukraine, has been losing members quickly as Ukrainians do not wish to be part of a church body that they deem to be merely an appendage of the Russian regime they believe to be tearing their country apart. These believers have been moving to the two independent Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kievan Patriarchate – the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox church which split from Moscow at the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous (Autonomous) Orthodox Church, which is the 1990 reincarnation of an earlier autonomous church that had been killed off by the Soviets. In addition to losing laity, the ROC’s branch in Ukraine has been losing clergy and whole churches, as well. In addition, a large number of clergy, including numerous bishops, serving within Russia itself are Ukrainian, which highlights the risk the ROC faces of schism within Russia itself over this war.
Perhaps most importantly, the ROC makes up approximately 70% of all Orthodox believers in the world, which gives it what could be considered dominant influence within the global Orthodox communion. Were the Ukrainian Orthodox churches currently answerable to Kirill to leave the Moscow Patriarchate en masse, this would simultaneously significantly reduce the numbers of Orthodox believers that would fall under Moscow’s authority and also make the Ukrainian Orthodox community one of the largest in the world – and in direct opposition to Moscow’s ecclesial authority and goals. The threat to both Kirill and to Putin, therefore, is that Moscow’s pretensions to international leadership of Orthodoxy are likely to ring increasingly hollow, and Russia’s culturally influence globally is likely to shrink rather than to increase.
Illustrating Kirill’s difficult position was his notable absence last year when Putin spoke before the Russian parliament announcing his annexation of Crimea. Putin clearly expected the Church to put its seal of approval on his annexation of what Putin described as the spiritual birthplace of the Russian nation, yet Kirill did not want to be too closely associated with aggressive Russian actions that threaten major schism within his global communion. Kirill sent the aged Metropolitan Juvenalij to Putin’s speech in his place.

Kirill’s desire to not completely alienate Orthodox believers on Russia’s periphery has nevertheless not reduced the militantly supportive attitude of the Church to Russia’s confrontation with the West, in which Ukraine is seen as only the immediate battleground. ROC priests are known to visit the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, providing spiritual support for the Russian troops and pro-Russian rebels. Most importantly, because the confrontation over Crimea and Ukraine are viewed as part of a struggle having eschatological implications to protect a Russian civilization believed to be under siege from unholy forces, the conflict has taken on the characteristics of what one analyst has termed an “Orthodox Jihad”, resulting in violent repression against all who are not Russian Orthodox and a severe polarization among religious groups in the region. As much as any geopolitical confrontation between Vladimir Putin and his Eurasianist vision of Russia, on the one hand, and the West with its liberal values on the other, the conflict has from the beginning had characteristics of being a holy war, and the lines between ecclesiological/religious and political differences have become increasingly blurred.

forbes.