Moscow Patriarchate Taking Full Control of Religious Life in Occupied Territories of Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Kremlin propagandists have succeeded in attracting worldwide attention to the ways in which the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine has moved to reduce the influence of the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But what the OCU has done in Ukraine pales in comparison with what the ROC MP has in Russian-occupied areas.
    There, the Moscow church working with the Russian military and Russian officials has sought to take full control over religious life, forcing other churches to cooperate fully with it or in many cases shutting down their parishes and other institutions, jailing or expelling religious leaders, and imposing a distinctly Russian pattern of religious activity.
    Those repressive actions -- and what they say about the intentions of Moscow and the Moscow-controlled OCU if Russian forces expand the areas of their control in Ukraine -- have received far less attention, but they are the subject of an important new article in Novaya Gazeta (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/04/03/dukhovnaia-zachistka).
    Mariya Erlikh, a journalist for that paper, says that since the Anschluss of four Ukrainian regions by Russia, the number of religious organizations has dropped from 1967 to 902, with some destroyed, others prohibited, and still others subjected to rules that make it impossible for them to continue to operate.
    According to Karen Nikiforov, one of the authors of the Religion in Flames project, it is impossible to be absolutely precise about the numbers or about how Russia is using the facilities it has taken over. “But we know,” she says, “about cases when religious buildings have been used by the Russian side as military objects, a violation of all international norms.”
    Sergey Chapnin, a specialist on religious life in the former Soviet space now working at Fordham University, adds that “we do not have any reliable data about how the policy of the ROC for the occupied territories has been formulated.” But it is obvious that “the interests of the Moscow Patriarchate and the interests of the Russian state coincide.”
    The ROC MP has moved against the OCU more dramatically than any other church, and today, these experts say, there do not remain any parishes of the OCU in the occupied areas. At the same time, the ROC MP has moved to purge hierarchs and priests from the nominally independent but in fact Moscow-subordinate UOC.
    Chapnin says that Moscow Patriarch Kirill doesn’t know the Ukrainian church and doesn’t trust Ukrainian priests and prelates and so has inserted Russian churchmen in their place. Presumably, with each advance of the Russian army, the Russian church will follow the same approach.
    In addition to Orthodox churches, the ROC MP and the Russian state have worked against other religious groups in the occupied territories as well, including Roman Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists; and much of their activity has been completely stopped.