Religion issues determined the invasion of Ukraine

Ruben Dargã Holdorf

In the week leading up to the Russian invasion, in February 2022, Deutsche Welle produced a feature story about tensions on the eastern Ukrainian border. The people interviewed by the reporter guaranteed that everything was normal and they had not seen any Russian tanks parading menacingly. Employees of the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences in Butcha, who were returning from relatives in the eastern region also reinforced this perception. Such facts corroborate the complaint of the Ukrainska Pravdanews, of Kyiv, that Putin manipulates the information.

The international press media, politicians and arrogant experts still make the public believe in an invasion for political, ethnic, economic reasons, when in reality the war promoted by Russia encompasses all these reasons under the aegis of the religious issue fed by the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and the interests of the mostly Western war industry. Add to the list of rogue powers the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), because they are interested in the expansion of military power in Eastern Europe and the sale of weapons in the conflict involving Russia, Ukraine and, eventually, Belarus and Georgia.

The tense discourses in the external context have one face, while the internal differences have another contour. Reassured, the Ukrainians did not even let the coronavirus bring them down. Life went on as normal, with the authorities choosing to save the economy and not interfere with citizens’ pockets. After all, most of Ukraine rejected vaccination and accused China, the United States, Russia, and whoever else supported them of conspiracy against humanity.

Much more devastating for public health are the effects of alcoholism and smoking, especially electronic cigarettes among young people (it’s forbidden in Brazil, but in Ukraine it has become a plague, the consequences of which will inevitably emerge in a decade). Granary of Europe, the first challenge aimed to survive the winter with few gas, boycotted by Gazprom, a Russian giant in energy production and distribution.

Religious war

At a mass delivered at St. Basil’s Cathedral in the Kremlin in Moscow on February 20, 2022, by Archimandrite Cyril I (Kirill), the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed Putin, designating him as “the man of God for this time”, and that the president should “rescue the spiritual heritage” in Kyiv. In 1992, a split occurred in the bowels of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, giving rise to the autocephalous movement of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church, headed by Volodymyr Romaniuk, the first patriarch of Kyiv. With the death of Romanyuk, Filareto Denisenko assumed primacy. Five years later, the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated all clerics of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

In 2018, the Patriarchate of Constantinople suspended Russian actions against the Autocephalous and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches of the Patriarchate of Kyiv, giving rise to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. At the beginning of the following year, the schism of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church took place, an act endorsed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. This infuriated Cyril I.

The history of this religious battle has roots in the Second World War, when Josef Stalin realized the opportunity to manipulate the religious mass through simulacra of orthodox Christianity. Thus, the denomination was reborn under the name of the Russian Orthodox Church. During communism, Cyril I headed the Church’s Department of External Relations, becoming the intermediary between the faithful and the government. For Svyatoslav Shevchuk, metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, this “pseudo-religious structure” offers “a tool” for Putin’s crimes.

While Ukraine is a semi-presidential country, led by the president, prime minister, and speaker of parliament (Rada), Russia is led by the president, prime minister, chairman of the Federation Council, speaker of the parliament (Duma), and the archimandrite of the Orthodox Church. Ukraine experienced, before the war, the scenario of religious freedom in a secular and democratic state. Russia, on the other hand, centralized actions in the president, subservient to religious, military, and oligarchic influences.

For Cyril I, Putin needed to purify Ukraine of infidels, referring to President Volodymyr Zelens’kyi, and Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, both of Jewish origin. The day after the mass, Noticias 60 published images of orthodox religious blessing the soldiers before leaving for war. The day before, reporter Helena Roshchyna, from Ukrainska Pravda, revealed a document released by the CIA with the names of people who were supposed to be killed during the invasion. At the top of the list were the president, and prime minister, politicians, the military, businessmen, then Russian opponents, Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile, journalists, anti-corruption activists, and leaders of religious minorities.

A UN special report on religious freedom and prejudice against minorities denounces the accusations of espionage raised by the Russian authorities against Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons in the Donbass, eastern Ukraine. For the invasion, Putin had the support of Chechen units led by Ramzan Kadyrov, son of a mufti, interpreter of the Koran. Troops trained by the tribal chief of Chechnya became notorious for kidnappings, terrorist attacks, assassinations and persecution against Christians of all stripes. The kadyrovs invaded Antonov Airport, in Hostomel, headed to neighboring Butcha and Irpin, being prevented from entering the capital to reach the Mariyinskyi Palace, the presidential headquarter. In Butcha, the Chechens committed one of the greatest war crimes, leaving bodies in the streets and burying others in trenches on the ground next to the St. Andrew the Apostle Orthodox Church.

Centuries of persecution

Russia’s claim to free Ukraine of Nazism it does not insert itself as a narrative in an unprecedented discourse, but fits centuries of spoliation and false justifications for enslaving the Ukrainian people. In the first place, there is no way to determine the label “Nazi” for a country led by descendants of Jews. The very history of invasions, submissions and massacres was mixed with the word “Slavic”, incorporated with another meaning in most western languages. The surface of the current Ukrainian territory is recent, resembling the sum of the areas of the States of New Mexico, and Arizona, a little smaller than Texas. It never had this size. Centuries ago, more than ten tribes or enclaves inhabited these lands in Eastern Europe. Mongolian, Ottoman, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Austro-Hungarian, Romanian and Nazi German hordes took turns and tormented Ukrainians for more than a millennium.

In the first third of the 18th century there were more white slaves in the world than those of African origin, whose advance took place when gold and silver mines were discovered in the Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in America. The enslavement of whites, mainly from the territories where the Ukrainian peoples lived, was due to debts, due to birth in a family of vassals and also because of kidnappings, invasions and wars. Thousands of kidnapped women and children made their way to the regions of the Ottoman Empire, from present-day Turkey to the ends of the Arabian Peninsula, to the harems of sultans, emirs, sheiks, and caliphs. From this fact, slavery was associated with the term “slave”, even present in other languages, such as Swedish (slav), French (esclave), German (sklave), different from the Latin “servus”. 

Taking advantage of the fall of the Russian monarchy, Ukrainians proclaimed independence, creating five autonomous states between 1917 and 1920. However, as a result of the organization and expansion of the Soviet Union, the communists incorporated the Ukrainian territories into the Bolshevik empire, gradually eliminating freedoms of the press, conscience, religious assembly, and property, even causing the great famine of 1932-33 (Holodomor), when Stalin killed more than ten million Ukrainians. The Protestant churches stopped grouping on the surface and began to worship in secret, becoming into underground denominations. Decades later, he received authorizations to open congregations, many of them directed by collaborating pastors appointed by public authorities, notably the secret police.

Spiritual panorama

The level of Christian missionary activity seems normal, with some restriction on public proselytism, but open to digital means such as the internet, social networks, TV and radio. It is common for several religions to participate together in public events, such as Ukrainian Thanksgiving Day on the third Sunday of September, Catholic Christmas on December 25^th, Orthodox Christmas on January 7^th, and Easter on the last Sunday of March. Ahead of the organization and presentations of Thanksgiving Day, usually on a stage installed in the center of the capital, Telekanal Nadiya (from the Ukrainian, “Hope”), the Hope Channel headed by Pastor Maksym Krupskyi, commands the celebration.

As in the West, there are services in Protestant churches, masses in Catholic, and Orthodox churches, Jewish ceremonies in synagogues. The Greek Cyril introduced Christianity among the Slavic peoples in the 9th century. He created the Cyrillic alphabet especially for this divisive territory between north and south, east and west, while sharing the gospel. The term Ukraine, which gave the country its name, means “border land”.

Before the war with Russia, 50.4% of Ukrainians declared themselves from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate; 26.1% from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate; 8% from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; 7.2% from the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church; 2.2% from the Roman Catholic Church; 2.2% Protestants; 0.6% from Judaism; and 3.3% from other trends. As a result of the Russian invasion and the dispersion of Ukrainians around the world, mainly in Western Europe, the number of those who declare themselves Ukrainian Orthodox grew, reducing the number of supporters of the Patriarchate of Moscow. The Marxist influence of Soviet times continues to spur the increase of atheists or non-religious, today at 7%.

Concerned about the expulsion of religious of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine who remained faithful to Moscow in the disputed Monastery of the Caves of Kyiv, one of the patrimonies to be rescued by Putin, patriarch Cyril I appealed to pope Francis, to the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres and the international community to intervene. According to the Russian religious, “human rights and freedoms are being violated in a scandalous way” by Ukrainians, ignoring the genocidal practices committed by their compatriots. No one took this request seriously.

Lessons for the world

There are those who suspect future restrictions on freedoms, regardless of who wins the conflict. Ukrainian theologian Taras Dzyubanskyy, from the Catholic University of Ukraine, accuses the Russian Orthodox Church of turning into a terrorist institution and its leader, Cyril I, as a military patriarch who uses weapons to spread violence and oppression. Martin Fornusek, editor of the Kyiv Independent newspaper, agrees with the religious leader in accusing the Kremlin of “turning religion into a weapon and using it as a tool of control and propaganda”.

By getting involved in politics during the communist regime, many religious paid the price of apostasy, betraying their peers, undermining trust and causing the churches to immerse itself in underground meetings, away from prying eyes and ears. Even today, behind-the-scenes conversations with people of strict confidence are still part of the preventive cultural heritage against negative surprises, in order to avoid scandal, trickery and backbiting. The new generations who did not experience this period of fear disagree with these habits arising from decades of persecution, but respect and value the experiences, now having the opportunity to overcome adversity under the advice of those who knew terror firsthand.

Ruben Dargã Holdorf

Doctor in Communication and Semiotics, worked as a Full-Time Professor in Ukraine (2021-22).