Moscow Patriarchate Losing Ground in Belarus and Kazakhstan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is losing ground in Belarus and Kazakhstan, the two post-Soviet states which after Ukraine have the largest number of parishes and believers of that church outside of Russia, further indication that the ROC MP is on its way to being reduced to a national Orthodox church rather than the international one it aspires to be.

            The Moscow Patriarchate has lashed out at the Belarusian Orthodox Church for failing to include references to the Moscow Patriarchate or the Russian Orthodox Church of which it is a part in all documents, a move that appears to many to be a step toward future autocephaly (charter97.org/ru/news/2025/7/25/649552/ and t.me/christianvision/4546).

            That some in Belarus are not making those references is clearly a sign that hierarchs and congregants among the Orthodox there want to set themselves apart from Moscow; and Moscow’s reaction shows how concerned the Moscow Patriarchate and presumably the Kremlin as well are about any move in that direction.

            (On Belarusian interest in autocephaly and Moscow’s strong opposition to it, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/moscows-greatest-fear-about-orthodox.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/kirills-description-of-ukraine-and.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/moscow-increasingly-worried-about.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/06/orthodoxy-in-belarus-moving-toward.html.)

            Meanwhile, developments in Kazakhstan have prompted one Moscow commentator to ask whether they indicate that Kazakhstan is moving along the Estonian and Ukrainian direction as far as the future of the Russian Orthodox Church there is concerned (vpoanalytics.com/informatsionnoe-protivoborstvo/goneniya-na-pravoslavnuyu-tserkov-poydut-li-v-kazakhstane-po-estonskomu-i-ukrainskomu-puti/).

            “Judging by everything that has happened,” Polina Bekker says, “everything [in Kazakhstan] is developing along a very similar scenario,” with officials in that country under the influence of the West seeking to promote both a schism in the ROC there and then the distancing of that church from Moscow.

            She says it “only remains to be hoped that Russian spiritual and secular structures who are interested in this will not allow the further fragmentation of Orthodox communities in neighboring countries.” Otherwise the West will achieve its goal of “dividing and ruling” the Russian church’s spiritual space.

            (On the state of Orthodoxy in Kazakhstan and possible moves in that direction, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/dissident-orthodox-priest-in-kazakhstan.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/uniate-churches-in-kazakhstan-help.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/war-of-missionaries-and-migrantophobes.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/orthodox-leaders-in-kazakhstan-now-say.html.)