Hosni Mahalli*
Some Western commentators are now talking about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to revive the legacy of the Soviet Union, who previously said “its collapse caused the disintegration of historical Russia”. Others have pointed to Putin’s religious and sectarian calculations in his military intervention in Ukraine.
The roots of these accounts go back to after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD), and then the Eastern Roman Empire, and the subsequent competition over its political and religious legacy among the empires that succeeded it.
Some try to link Vladimir Putin with Vladimir I, Prince of Kyiv (978-1015), who was a pagan but converted to Christianity after he married the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II in Constantinople, and made Christianity the religion of his kingdom and its capital, Kyiv.
Some, also, see the Russian intervention in Ukraine as a “crusade to save the Holy Orthodox lands from the heretics and Western apostasy,” meaning the Kyiv rulers backed by Washington and its allies. On December 16, 2018, the US-backed Ukrainian President Poroshenko announced the establishment of a Ukrainian Orthodoxy church that is independent of the Russian Church, and he said that “Ukrainian national security depends to a large extent on religious independence from Russia,” considering this decision “a victory for the faithful people of Ukraine over the demons of Moscow.”
Poroshenko made the announcement at a special meeting of bishops in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The 39-year-old bishop, Epifani, was elected head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
The separation of this church from the Russian Patriarchate in Moscow, to which it had been affiliated since 1686, came as a shock to President Putin who sought to block this in vain. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, too, failed to prevent this despite his work since the independence of Ukraine in 1991 to unite the Orthodox community.
The visit of Bishop Epifani to Istanbul on December 5, 2019 to receive the letter of ecclesiastical approval, according to which the Orthodox Church in Istanbul (Constantinople) grants independence to the New Ukraine Church, worsened the situation in the relationship between Moscow and Kiev on the one hand, and Moscow and Istanbul on the other.
The independence of the Ukrainian Church deepened the division at the level of the Orthodox churches after the Russian Church announced its separation from the Orthodox family, in protest against the role of Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in Istanbul, who is known for his close relations with Washington, without which he has no role or influence, even in Turkey, he takes into account its interests in order to ensure the support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Some believe that the separation of the Ukrainian Church from the Russian Church represented a major blow to the Russian president’s calculations, as the Orthodox Ukrainians constituted about 25% of the total Christians affiliated with the Russian Church, which lost millions of followers and millions of dollars from church property that Kyiv sought to control.
This matter embarrassed the Russian Church, at a time when Orthodox Christianity witnessed a great revival in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, both in Russia and in the surrounding countries, as more than 60% of the population is Orthodox.
A number of thinkers point to the strong links between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate during different periods of history. President Putin relied on the Church “as a uniting force that enhances his position as a representative and protector of the interests of the original Russian nation, after the status of the Church declined during the Soviet period.”
Putin made great efforts to support the church financially, morally and politically, including restoring church properties that were sold during the communist era, building hundreds of churches and cathedrals, as well as including teaching Orthodox culture in the school curricula. At the direction of Putin, the Russian army built an army cathedral in Moscow, which was inaugurated in September 2020 during the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of Russia’s victory in World War II.
For his part, the Moscow Patriarch Kirill shares the same feelings of pride and pride with the Kremlin and the Russian army, and talks in his speeches about “the Church’s role in ensuring the spiritual unity of peoples in the states existing on the territory of historical Russia, and its importance in protecting the system of Orthodox values that the Russian Orthodox civilization carries to the world.” This makes Patriarch Kirill an important ideological ally of President Putin.
Orthodox Christians outside Russia are widely distributed in both the Balkans and the Middle East, mostly in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and southeastern Turkey. These areas were under Ottoman rule from the fifteenth century until the beginning of the first world war.
All these years witnessed a strong struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia, supported by its Orthodox Church, which had a direct interest in the Christian population in the areas of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. The Treaty of Kucuk Kainarja in 1774 recognized Russia’s supervision of the rights of these Christians, given that it was the most important authority in that period.
One of the causes of Russian tension with the Ottoman Empire was the Ottoman Sultan’s insult to Orthodox Christians, who handed over the keys to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to Catholics, ignoring the rights of the Orthodox Church in the Holy Land.
It is ironic that the Russian interest in Orthodoxy in the Middle East continued during the era of the Soviet Union, which exercised its influence in the Middle East through the Orthodox present in it, which explains the presence of a large number of Arab left-wing and communist Christians.
There are two patriarchates in the region. The Patriarchate of Antioch, which has established itself as the Arab Orthodox Church, has jurisdiction over Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the eastern region of Turkey. It is followed by about a million Christians, half of whom are now in Syria, after many have left during the past ten years. As for the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, it covers occupied Palestine, Jordan and the territories of the Palestinian Authority. The Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem have long been competing to extend their influence over the region, which explains the first’s sympathy with the Russian Church, and the second’s alliance with the Church of Constantinople in Istanbul.
At this point, the political orientation of the Russian Orthodox Church resonates with the policies of the Russian state, whose interests are closely linked to the situation of Orthodox Christians in Syria and Lebanon, which Putin referred to in his September 2015 speech, when he “expressed his country’s concern about the situation of Christians.” He accused the West of “not taking adequate measures to protect them.”
Some see in Putin’s position in defense of Christians, and the Orthodox in particular, “one of the reasons for the Russian intervention to prevent the institutions of the Syrian state from collapsing, as long as this state guarantees the rights of Christians and defends them against the dangers of genocide by terrorist groups backed by the West.”
The Russian President has declared several times that Russia will not abandon its vital interests in the Middle East and in any other region of the world, and that the interests of Christians is one of his interests.
The Russian Orthodox Church, as a “symbol of the distinctive cultural values of the Russian people,” plays a major role in Russian foreign policy, which attaches special importance to religious minorities in their places of existence, at a time when the Christian-Catholic West ignored the crimes that Christians were subjected to in Syria and Iraq at the hands of ISIS and other factions.
This said about the Middle East. As for the Balkans, Russia lost the geopolitical battle that relies mainly on religious/sectarian accounts after Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro (with its Orthodox population) moved away from it, despite the close historical ties and the unity of religion and sect to the main church in Constantinople, which enjoys great support from Washington, Paris and other European capitals, especially after the US and European countries with their various institutions and agencies penetrated these two countries, as is the case in Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo.
In turn, Tel Aviv succeeded in infiltrating all of them without neglecting, and cleverly, provoking sectarian hostility among Christians, which it did and is doing among Muslims, and which Washington and its allies in Georgia and Armenia of the Orthodox sect sought and sought to keep them away from the Russian Orthodox Church as well by creating political problems in these two countries through colored revolutions.
The recognition of the Coptic Pope in Egypt, Tawadros, of the Ukrainian Church, in coordination with Washington, came as a second shock after the recognition of the Church of Istanbul, which was denounced by the Russian Church, while emphasizing the continuation of its relations with the Egyptian Church Council, with which the Pope did not share his decision.
In all cases, and whatever the results of the current crisis in Ukraine, it has become clear that Washington and its allies, at the beginning of the “Arab Spring”, incited terrorist groups against the “Shiites and Alawites”, and continued to provoke the Shiites against the Shiites, as is the case now in Iraq. The West planned to create problems for Russia, not only politically, militarily and economically, but also religiously and doctrinally, and therefore socially and culturally as well.
Some see “Orthodox identity as closely related to the Russian national identity, and with feelings of pride, pride and cultural superiority throughout all stages of history,” which President Putin seeks to prove, according to the opinion of many analysts and historians who know well the history of Russia, and the Russians who lost 25 million of soldiers during World War II, 6 million of them fell in defense of Ukraine against Hitler’s Nazism. In it is in this context that Putin frames his war as one against the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
___________
* Hosni Mahalli is an international relations researcher and specialist in Turkish affairs
