Kirill’s Crack about Critic Possibly Being from Western Ukraine Speaks Volumes about Moscow’s Attitudes about Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – Until very recently, it was a commonplace among Western commentators on Ukraine that Western Ukraine, the portion that Stalin annexed to the USSR, was fundamentally different from the rest of that republic and even was the primary source of anti-Russian attitudes in Ukraine as a whole.
    But sociological investigations by Ukrainian scholars have shown that there has been almost a complete convergence in attitudes about Russia between Western Ukraine and the rest of that country (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/putins-invasion-has-led-to-almost.html).
    Consequently, talk in the West about divisions between Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine as far as attitudes toward Russia are concerned has become less common. But strikingly, it remains a prominent feature of discussions in Moscow about Ukraine and even appears to shape Kremlin views about how Ukraine might be partitioned to Moscow’s advantage.
    The latest example come from Moscow Patriarch Kirill who snapped back at a priest from Mozhaisk who said the church should be trying to help Russians find the way to Christ rather than to become better patriots of the Russian state and active supporters of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (meduza.io/en/feature/2025/02/12/are-you-from-western-ukraine).
    Kirill said that he’d “never heard that before” and then pointedly asked whether the priest was “by any chance from Western Ukraine?” The Meduza news agency reported that the hall “filled with the sound of laughter and applause,” especially after the patriarch told the priest to “go sit down and seriously reflect on what you just blurted out.”
    But Kirill’s remark is no laughing matter. Instead, it reflects both his unstinting support of almost anything Putin does and the belief both in the Kremlin and in the Patriarchate that Ukrainian opposition to Moscow is rooted in Western Ukraine rather than being part of the mentality of Ukrainians in the country as a whole.
    That has not only sparked suggestions in Moscow that Stalin made a major mistake by annexing Western Ukraine but also forms the core of Putin’s ideas about partitioning Ukraine where he assumes that without Western Ukraine, an eastern Ukraine annexed to Russia won’t be a problem (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/stepashin-says-stalin-made-major.html).
    That notion is almost as certainly wrong as it is widespread in Moscow, and that in turn means that even if the West stops supporting Ukraine and Moscow is allowed to annex large swaths of Ukraine to Russia, that will not end the conflict. Ukrainians in the east just like Ukrainians in the West will continue to resist whatever Moscow elites think.