Moscow Patriarchate Official in Europe Likely Purged Not for Playing Poker but for Supporting Ukraine, ‘NG-Religii’ Journalist Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 18 – When Patriarch Kirill removed Metropolitan Nestor from his post as head of the ROC MP exarchate in Western Europe, journalists in Russia and the West had a field day suggesting that the head of the ROC MP had taken this step because of Nestor’s well-known passion for poker and other games of chance.

            But Anastasiya Koskello, a journalist for NG-Religii, points out that the Moscow Patriarchate did not give a reason and that it is more likely that Metropolitan Nestor was removed because of charges by other Russian hierarchs that the latter has been pro-Ukrainian (ng.ru/ng_religii/2025-11-18/9_607_episcopade.html).

            Those charges were made on the telegram channel maintained by Metropolitan Leonid over the last year in which he suggested that Nestor was guilty of pro-Ukrainian and Russophobic attitudes and had even taken part in church services with hierarchs of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

            If Koskello is right, this explanation suggests that Kirill, who as the former head of the ROC’s foreign office knows how important it is for exarchs abroad to balance Moscow’s requirements with local needs, almost certainly is seeking to send a message to what may be a growing number of hierarchs unhappy with the continuation of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine.

            And these events, she continues, highlight what appears to be the emergence of ever more opposition to Kirill’s slavish support for the Kremlin, an opposition that the Moscow patriarch may now be trying to put down by such purges and possibly in the future even the use of Russian state power to solidify his position by reaffirming his loyalty to Putin.