Kirill, the religious patriarch of Russia in charge of “sanctifying” Putin’s war in Ukraine

“In this difficult period for our country, may the Lord help each of us to support each other, even around the government, and may he help power to be accountable to the people and to serve them with humility and goodwill, even to the point of giving His own life”, he said at the beginning of April, during a mass celebrated in Moscow, Kirill, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Now the most powerful religious ally of Vladimir Putin could be included in the extensive list of those sanctioned by the European Union in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev He is the top leader of a religion that would group 150 million faithful mainly distributed among RussiaBelarus and Ukraine. It is estimated that 71% of the Russian population identifies as Orthodox; while 78% of Ukrainians would follow this same religion.

LOOK: The religious aspect, another Russian justification for invading Ukraine

But the patriarch is also a faithful ally of Putin. His closeness, which ranges from sharing the same city of birth, through his ties with the KGB and his current unconditional support when the Kremlin seems more isolated than ever from the West, has led the European Commission to propose including him in its sixth package of sanctions on businessmen, politicians and other Russian figures for the military offensive launched since February 24.

“If there is something to be wary of, it is always religious statistics, but the Russian Orthodox Church claims figures like the ones you mention. Other studies suggest that they are much less. What is true is that during the last 20 years there has been a kind of religious resurgence in Russia compared to what happened during the Soviet Union, where religion was relegated and even persecuted. Putin understood that separating the Orthodox religion from the Russian national soul was counterproductive and rather he settled on this religious force to strengthen his way of seeing the country and the world. The russian orthodoxy has a very powerful role and even more so in this context of crisis”, he explains to Trade the expert historian on religious issues Juan Fonseca.

RELIGIOUS CRADLE

Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev was born 75 years ago in the former Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg. His father, Mikhail Vasilievich Gundyayev, was a priest and his mother, Raisa Vladimirovna Gundyayeva, a German teacher. But his religious roots go back even to his grandfather, Vasili Stepanovich Gundyayev, a deacon opposed to the modernist movement, imprisoned in the Solovki labor camp and exiled for his ecclesiastical activity.

After finishing school, Vladimir entered the Leningrad Council Seminary and then attended the Spiritual Academy in the same city. He was ordained in 1969 and, in parallel, served as professor of theology at the Leningrad Council Academy after earning his doctorate in that subject.

In 1976 he was consecrated bishop of the port city of Víborg and a year later archbishop of the same. In the following years he was Archbishop of Smolensk, Viazma and Kaliningrad, before becoming Metropolitan Patriarch in 1991 by decree of Alexis II, the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all Russias.

Precisely after the death of Alexis II, in 2008, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev he was appointed Guardian of the Patriarchal Throne, which among other functions delegated him to organize the funeral of the religious leader. On January 27, 2009 he was elected as successor to the deceased patriarch and four days later he was enthroned in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow under the name of Kirill (translated into Spanish as Cyril I).

On February 1, 2009 he was consecrated as Patriarch of Moscow and all Russias in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow under the name of Kirill. (ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP /)

Kirill’s marked rise within the ecclesiastical structure, however, is surrounded by suspicion, mainly because it took place during Soviet times, when religion was considered an oppressive relic by the communists. “To become a church leader in the USSR and do something at that time, you had to be affiliated with the KGB”Georg Michels, a professor at the University of California Riverside specializing in the history of Russia and Ukraine, explained to the Los Angeles Times.

According to an article in La Nación, there would also be KGB documents issued on April 15, 1989 that would demonstrate the links between the then young archbishop of Smolensk and the Soviet security services.

“The first references date back to February 1972, when he was a young 25-year-old priest (…) His first mention in the KGB files arose from a trip to Oceania”, noted the then KGB chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, according to the documents. The priest was known asagent Mikhailov” and his main task was “participate in international religious organizations, including the World Council of Churches, and the Conference of European Churches, and provide information to the Soviet Union”.

According to the same article in La Nación, at the same time Vladimir Putin was studying the last years of his law degree in Leningrad before joining the KGB.

THE SINS OF KIRILL

Kirill’s figure, like that of many other personalities close to power in Russia, is surrounded by a long list of questions. The patriarch, beyond his confessed rejection of feminism, LGBT rights and his desire to see a great Russia restored despite the fact that this involves the annexation of other now independent nations, has an incredible heritage divided between properties and businesses.

The investigative newspaper Proekt estimated in 2020 that Kirill and his family had properties in Moscow valued at 225 million rubles (3.2 million euros), including an apartment of 145 square meters. A year earlier, the independent media Novaya Gazeta estimated between 4 billion and 8 billion dollars his wealth distributed in jewelry, automobile, oil and fishing businesses.

According to the Spanish newspaper ABC, it would be precisely this heritage on which the European Commission would focus its sanctions.

CLOSE TO PUTIN

From their positions, one as Russia’s top political leader and the other as his religious counterpart, Kirill and Putin have exchanged countless praises and constant support for their decisions.

“Kirill is in line with previous Russian patriarchs, in that the Russian Orthodox Church has usually served, both before and after the Soviet era, as one of the foundations of the regime.”, says Fonseca.

In this 2007 photo, Putin and Kirill can be seen during a visit to the Butovo camp, where more than 20,000 political prisoners were shot during the Great Terror of the Soviet Union. (MAXIM MARMUR / AFP /)

By 2012, Kirill regarded Putin’s rise to power twelve years earlier as “a miracle of god”. Later he would assure that the head of the Kremlin is “the only defender of Christianity in the world”.

“In a particular way, Patriarch Kirill has strengthened this historic alliance between the patriarchy and the Russian government around the struts Putin has built, which is a kind of continuity of what was tsarism. This idea of ​​associating three elements: nationalism, authoritarianism and the role of the Orthodox Church in the Russian political-social scheme. It is a continuity, but it is true in a much closer way than other previous patriarchs”, comments the historian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow visiting the exhibition “Memory of Generations: The Great Patriotic War in Pictorial Arts” on November 4, 2019. (SHAMIL ZHUMATOV / AFP /)

In 2014, the current patriarch aligned himself with the head of the Kremlin in the annexation of Crimea, arguing that “the conflict in Ukraine has an unequivocal religious foundation”. A year later, when Russia joined the Syrian civil war in support of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, Kirill sent a letter to the troops stating that it was a war “defensive in nature” Y “fair”.

During the current invasion of Ukraine, Kirill has not only defined the military offensive as a “special operation for russian peacekeeping” but has not been shy about pointing out that “in times of war, service in the Armed Forces is a real feat, and this is exactly the moment we are living in now”, even after learning of massacres such as those registered in Bucha or Mariúpol.

For Kirill, nothing will stop him from seeing Russia as “a peace loving country”, as he himself defined it from the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces in Moscow.

Kirill has defined the current invasion of Ukraine as a “special Russian peacekeeping operation.” (GRIGORY DUKOR / AFP /)

“There is a utility basically internally. What Kirill and other Orthodox leaders do is give a moral meaning to a military intervention. That is, to create a narrative that tries to convince the Russians that they are on a kind of crusade not only political but moral. It is associated with the conservative discourse that Kirill has raised for some time, in the sense that Putin would be the incarnation of a political leader who defends traditional values ​​against a West in moral decline. Outside it is seen as a dangerous instrumentalization of religion that has been condemned by leaders such as Pope Francis, among others, but inside the Russian nation it is quite useful”, assures the expert.

Fonseca further points out that while these defenses may be surprising today coming from a religious leader, they have been a constant throughout history.

“At present, perhaps little is associated, but in previous times it was usual to associate the religious discourse with a nationalist one. Particularly in the Eastern Christian world, the Orthodox churches have served as one of the sources of some peoples’ own nationalism. In Greece’s war of independence against Turkey in the 19th century, Greek Orthodoxy was one of the elements that strengthened that struggle. The same can be said of the resistance of Polish Catholicism against Soviet hegemony. Similar phenomena happened with Orthodoxy in Georgia or Moldova. What Kirill does is follow that line, but the difference is that in other countries the link between church, power and nation is being avoided“, Explain.

Source: Elcomercio