Putin's Holy War And The Disintegration Of The "Russian World" 2.

A Christian Orthodox priest blesses pro-Russian militants during a service in the village of Senyonovka, near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk, on May 26, 2014. AFP PHOTO/ VIKTOR DRACHEV (Photo credit should read VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Putin justified his annexation of Crimea in predominantly spiritual language, asserting that Crimea has “sacred meaning for Russia, like the Temple Mount for Jews and Muslims”, and that Crimea is “the spiritual source of the formation of the multifaceted but monolithic Russian nation . . . It was on this spiritual soil that our ancestors first and forever recognized their nationhood.”
Religious impulses have long animated Russian attitudes toward Crimea. Few remember today that the Crimean War of the 1850′s was fought by Czarist, Orthodox Russia against the Ottoman Turks (the Muslim superpower of the day), who were allied with Great Britain (which entered the war in order to keep Europe from being dominated by Russia) and Roman Catholic France (which was, among other things, conflicting with Moscow over whether the Roman Catholic or the Orthodox Church would control the holy sites in the Holy Land) over religious divisions as much as anything else with Russia, then as now, viewing itself as the defender of Orthodox Christianity. (Also relevant to the current conflict is the fact that the war gave rise to a Ukrainian national consciousness that eventually led to an independent Ukraine.) Philip Jenkins, a history professor at Baylor University, has written an excellent summary of the historical religious roots of the conflict which can be accessed here.
In Crimea, under Russian rule, severe restrictions on religious practice have been imposed on all non-ROC religionists. Many religious leaders have reported surveillance from the security services and questioning by FSB officers. Jewish synagogues, numerous Muslim mosques, and Christian groups seen as “Western” such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or pro-Ukrainian, have all experienced police raids and other forms of pressure. All 1,546 religious organizations which held registration as religious organizations under Ukrainian law prior to Russian annexation have been forced to re-register under the new government. According to statistics of the Russian Ministry of Justice, only 1% of those which had such registration status previously have succeeded in regaining such status under the new rule – partially because many did not even apply as they expected their applications to be rejected by the new authorities, and partially because very few of those who did apply were granted legal status. Those groups which do not have legal status do not have the ability to publish literature, have bank accounts, or own property, among other things, meaning that a lack of legal status effectively paralyses groups from virtually all activities that can influence public life.
The vast majority of non-ROC religious leaders in Crimea, particularly those with Ukrainian and other citizenship, have been expelled or face expulsion – the stripping of the legal status of most religious organizations nullified the basis for the visas and residency permits of their leaders, creating the legal justification for their expulsion. Most of the approximately two dozen Turkish imams who had been working in Crimea prior to annexation, for example, have been expelled. The leader of the Salvation Army in Crimea has fled after reporting harassment by security officers, and the home of the bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kievan Patriarchate in Simferopol and Crimea was burned down.
Crimea’s Muslim Tatars the original occupants of the peninsula, which still make up a little over 10% of Crimea’s population, had their last television station in Crimea closed down on April 1. Jews, too, have experienced persecution, with synagogues being defaced with Nazi swastikas, and the prominent Reformed Rabbi Mikhail Kapustin being expelled from Crimea after his outspoken condemnation of Russian annexation.
In rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine, ROC priests bless the Russian soldiers and pro-Russian rebels fighting, as they see it, for the very soul of humanity. As one priest articulated shortly after visiting Russian troops in Donetsk last year, Ukranian forces and their Western supporters are fighting for “The establishment of planetary Satanic rule.” He went on to explain that “What’s occurring here is the very beginning of a global war. Not for resources or territory, that’s secondary. This is a war for the destruction of true Christianity, Orthodoxy.” Speaking of those who control policy in the West, the priest, known as “Father Viktor”, went on to explain that “They are intentionally hastening the reign of Antichrist.” He then declared that “the soldier is also a monastic, but wages not an inner war with the spirits of evil, but an outer one.”
With apocalytic views such as this dominant among pro-Russian combatants and spread by the ROC, it is perhaps not surprising that there are widespread reports that non-ROC religionists are being targeted by pro-Russian militias and are being kidnaped, tortured and killed. The rebel government in Donetsk, the self-styled “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, which has declared the ROC its official religion, has been particularly aggressive in its crackdown on non-ROC believers. Many Protestant and other non-ROC believers have fled to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is still controlled by the Ukrainian government. A refugee camp outside of the city has grown up in the past few months composed of non-ROC Christians fleeing persecution in Donetsk.

Rebel Donetsk authorities have closed Donetsk Christian University, which is Baptist, and have also been reported by displaced ministers to have seized Protestant church facilities and begun using them as weapons storage facilities. Segiv Kosiak, pastor of Word of Life Evangelical Church in Donetsk, reported that armed men stormed his church, declaring that the church would be destroyed, and threatening clergy and parishioners with the firing squad if they protested.  Human Rights Watch has reported numerous examples of arbitrary detention and torture, including one report of an evangelical pastor from Donetsk who was arrested and tortured merely for holding an ecumenical prayer marathon for peace and unity in this region torn apart by war.

Part of the reason for the persecution of Protestants, in particular, is that many of the Protestant groups in Ukraine have strong links to the United States, which immediately makes them suspect. Protestants are therefore viewed as, at a minimum, being liable to spread “corrupting” influences, and, possibly even being American spies. Catholics, too, both Latin and Greek, have been aggressively persecuted, although the Greek Catholic Church, which is based primarily in western Ukraine, is pro-European, and was one of the strongest supporters of the Maidan protests, has come in for special attention. Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, the apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, has stated that “Any number of statements emanating from the Kremlin of late leave little doubt of Russian Orthodox hostility and intolerance toward Ukrainian Greek-Catholics”, and has warned that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is “menaced with extinction” both in Crimea by the Russian authorities and in eastern Ukraine by the pro-Russian rebels. He went on to predict regarding Crimea that “If Russia remains in control of the region, it is hard to imagine that Catholic life, whether Greek or Latin, would be allowed to return.”
As in Crimea, it is not just non-ROC Christians who are experiencing persecution in the portions of eastern Ukraine that are rebel-held. According to the Jerusalem Post, the vast majority of the approximately 10,000 strong Jewish community that existed in Donetsk prior to the Russian-inspired rebellion have fled, leaving the city virtually devoid of Jews. As Russian troops and their pro-Russian rebel allies have advanced, Ukraine’s Jews have had to move further into Ukrainian-government held territory.
For their part, believers belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kievan Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, Catholics, Protestants, etc., have been assisting the Ukrainian soldiers in their fight against the rebels and the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. The Patriarch of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Filaret, has directly challenged Putin’s spiritual claims, lamenting the fact that Putin “is misleading some people, and they think that in fact this ruler protects traditional spiritual and moral values from the ravages of globalization. But the fruit of his actions, which the Gospel calls us to evaluate, suggest otherwise.” Filaret has called on Putin “to stop sowing evil and death, [and] to repent”, and has gone so far as to say that Putin has been possessed by Satan. Ukraine has had a history of religious diversity, yet the political polarization within Ukraine has been mirrored by an increasing religious polarization.

The cultural impulses that are driving the revival of state-based religious fervor from within Russia are deeply enough ensconced within Russian society that a mere change of Russian leadership at some future point is unlikely to address the issue. Rather than building a new Orthodox empire, however, Putin’s aggressive and neo-imperial actions, encouraged by a militant Russian Orthodoxy, have served to alienate those peoples living around Russia’s periphery, making it increasingly unlikely that Putin will find success in his efforts to build a “Russian world.”

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