Patriarch Kirill, close to Putin, worked for the KGB in the 1970s, according to Swiss newspapers
He is a close supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a strong supporter of war in Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill worked for Russian intelligence when he lived in Geneva in the 1970s, according to two Swiss newspapers, citing declassified records.
According to the daily Morning Sunday and the SonntagsZeitungthe file established by the federal police on the one who is today the spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church “confirms that ‘Monsignor Kirill’, as he is referred to in this document, belongs to the KGB”the foreign intelligence service of the time of the Soviet Union.
The two media were able to consult the file with the Swiss federal archives. The mission of Kirill, whose code name was “Mikhailov”, was to influence the World Council of Churches (WCC), which was infiltrated by the KGB in the 1970s and 1980s.
The objective of the Soviets was then to bring the Geneva institution to denounce the United States and its allies, and to moderate its criticisms of the lack of religious freedom in the USSR, the daily newspapers remind us, which underline that the Russian Church “denies any comment on Kirill’s spying activity in Geneva”.