A SENIOR Russian Orthodox Church cleric, Metropolitan Kirill (Pokrovsky) of Stavropol, has called for Russia to occupy more Ukrainian territory, as the war enters its fifth year.
In an interview last week with the Russian Orthodox Church’s TV channel Spas, Metropolitan Kirill, the Church’s director for relations with the armed forces, said of the current peace talks: “It’s unclear where this operation will be halted and what the conditions for a peace agreement will be — and how much Ukraine and the West will violate such an agreement, as in the past.
“If the Western satanists fail to withdraw, and the current junta still controls territory, the Orthodox Church’s persecution will continue, and Russia will need to go further, occupying Odessa and Kiev as well.”
In a message for the annual Fatherland Defenders Day, on 23 February, he urged Russian forces to continue “giving themselves for the safety and prosperity of the people”. In a lecture in January, he said that President Zelensky could be “eliminated by a missile”, but not Ukraine’s “satanists”, who had been “raised up by Uniats, Westernisers, NATO, and so on”.
Yakov Vorontsov, a former Orthodox priest, who was unfrocked in the summer of 2023 for criticising church support for the war, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan. Charges against the priest of “inciting interfaith hatred” were dropped for lack of evidence last May, but in February he was arrested and jailed for tens for alleged drug-dealing, at the request of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Kazakh metropolitan diocese.
Russian Orthodox bishops have condemned American and Israeli attacks on Iran, which they say could jeopardise the supply of drones and other munitions for the war in Ukraine.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, in a message last weekend to the President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, lauded the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an air strike (News, 6 March), as “a man of deep religious convictions, a spiritual and national leader strong in spirit and character”.
The Patriarch also expressed shock at a Ukrainian drone attack last week on a chemical plant near Smolensk. In a message, he said that the strike showed “cynicism and a lack of principles”, and that “terrorist acts” against civilian targets constituted a “grave war crime”.
Preaching at a funeral for plant employees killed in the attack, Metropolitan Isidor (Tupikin) of Smolensk called on “clergy, laity, government, and people” to “stand united in defence of the fatherland” under protection from “the Lord, the Queen of Heaven, the holy warriors and saints of God”.