Patriarch Cyril during an Orthodox Christmas mass on January 6 in Moscow
Image: AFP
During the Cold War, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gunyayev, using the alias “Mikhailov”, snooped around the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Today, as Moscow Patriarch Kirill, he stands firmly at Putin’s side.
Patriarch Kirill has long been Vladimir Putin’s man for spiritual rearmament. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has already praised Russia’s military intervention in Syria as a “holy fight”. Cyril stylizes the war of aggression against Ukraine as a “metaphysical struggle” in which Russia is good and the West is evil. The patriarch echoes Moscow apocalyptic tales, as he did recently on the occasion of the Orthodox baptism, when he said “any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world”.
Kyrill accuses compatriots who fled Putin’s mobilization of clinging to “wrong values imported from outside”, punishes peace-mongers among the priests of his church and describes the relations between church and state as unprecedentedly good. This “harmony” is important “so that our country can continue on a course that is truly independent of the centers of world power and on which it is boldly moving forward,” said Kyrill last week on the 14th anniversary of his enthronement in February 2009.