By Including Ingushetia in New Grozny Bishopric, Moscow Patriarchate Weakens Dagestan and Ingushetia and Helps Chechnya’s Kadyrov

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 20 – Moscow Patriarch Kirill has significantly increased the number of bishoprics but typically either because of population changes or more often because he wants to insert his own men in these positions so as to control both the management of the ROC MP now and the election of his successor eventually.
    But now the Russian prelate has made a move that puts him and his church in the middle of politics in three predominantly Muslim republics of the North Caucasus and represents a serious tilt against Ingushetia and Dagestan and in favor of Chechnya whose leader, Ramzan Kadyrov aspires to expand his republic and power.
    What Kirill has done through the Holy Synod which because of his earlier expansion of bishoprics he completely controls is to take the small number of Orthodox parishes in Dagestan and Ingushetia, where there is only one, away from the Makhachkala bishopric, and give them to a new bishopric based in Grozny, the Chechen capital.
    These technical changes and the new names that will appear on the church map are described at fortanga.org/2025/03/v-ingushetii-i-chechne-osnovali-novuyu-pravoslavnuyu-eparhiyu/, rg.ru/2025/03/20/reg-skfo/v-russkoj-pravoslavnoj-cerkvi-sozdana-novaia-groznenskaia-eparhiia.html and vedomosti.ru/strana/north_caucasian/news/2025/03/20/1099227-uchrezhdena-groznenskaya-eparhiya.
    Those changes matter to the church itself, but far more important is the political message all this sends: Moscow both secular and now religious is backing Kadyrov and the Chechens against Ingushetia and Dagestan, something that will infuriate the latter and embolden the former, neither of which will contribute to stability in the North Caucasus.