The Use of Religious Arguments for the Justification of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Kristina Stoeckl is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). Her forthcoming book, co-authored with Dmitry Uzlaner, is titled The Moralist International. Russia in the Global Culture Wars (Fordham University Press 2022).

The Russian war against Ukraine has put a religion at the center of public perception and journalistic reporting that has so far remained largely under the radar of broad public attention: Orthodox Christianity and, more specifically, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox churches in Ukraine. Nearly every news outlet these days has shown at some point symbolic images of the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill and Vladimir Putin in a gilded church setting. And indeed, this war and the justifications given by the Russian president and the head of the church for the military aggression have made clear how closely the Orthodox Church and the state are linked in Russia. On the other hand, the critical reactions of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine and the Orthodox churches worldwide have also demonstrated that Orthodoxy is not always guided by a “symphonic” closeness of church and autocratic state but that there are also Orthodox voices that speak for democracy, peace, and liberal values.

In this blog post, I focus on the Russian church-state side of this story. For the critical reactions of global Orthodoxy to the Moscow Patriarchate, I refer the reader to the blog Public Orthodoxy of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University and, in particular, to the recent post “A Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ (Russkii Mir) Teaching.”

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The Madness of War and the Weapons of the Spirit: The Catholic Church and Peace for Ukraine

Andrea Pin is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Padua, and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University.

The media that have been covering the Catholic Church’s handling of the war raging in Ukraine have often focused on two details. On the one hand, the Pope went to visit the Russian Ambassador to the Holy See in Rome a few days before tanks invaded Ukraine—a very unusual move for a Pontiff. On the other hand, the Church has so far avoided blaming Russia explicitly for the destruction of cities and the thousands of deaths in Ukraine. This silence, the story goes, would fit with the Catholic agenda. After the epochal meeting between the Moscow Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis that took place in Cuba in early 2016, the Vatican would try to avoid any attrition with the Russian Orthodox Church’s leader, who seems to support Putin’s invasion. Actually, there is more than what meets the eye.

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Religion and the Russian-Ukrainian War

Kharkiv’s Freedom Square after the Russian missile attack (2 March 2022).

On 24 February 2022, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine resulting in thousands killed, destruction of Ukrainian cities, and millions of forced displaced persons. Putin’s invasion has become a new part of a bloody tragedy started in 2014 with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the inflammation of the war in Eastern Ukraine.

The religious component of this conflict has manifested itself in a variety of aspects: from religious justification and rhetoric employed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, to the perception of the war by Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches, to the dramatic situation with religious freedom in the territories under Russia and its proxies’ control. These and other issues are discussed in this series.

Posts in the Series:

Dmytro Vovk. Religion and the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

Elizaveta GaufmanReligion, the Russian-Ukrainian War, and Social Media

Regina ElsnerThe End of Unity: How the Russian Orthodox Church Lost Ukraine

Andriy FertPray Against Foreign Invasion or Pray for Peace? Ukrainian Orthodox Churches and the Russian-Ukrainian War

Andrea PinThe Madness of War and the Weapons of the Spirit: The Catholic Church and Peace for Ukraine

Kristina StoecklThe Use of Religious Arguments for the Justification of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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