The Role of the ROC in the Sacralization of Secular Imperial Nationalism

Alar Kilp is a lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Tartu (Estonia).

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine lacks legitimacy, and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in endorsing Russia’s war effort lacks justification. Moral assessment of the situation is unambiguous. Ambiguity does exist, however, over the questions of whether the conflict has a religious dimension and what specific role religion has played in the year since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022.

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No End to the Dead End? The Difficult Relationship Between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Moscow Patriarchate

Regina Elsner is a researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin.

A year ago, a few days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, I wrote a post here about the final split between Russian and Ukrainian Orthodoxy. This split was inevitable due to the “scandalous ignorance of the situation of the people in Ukraine, whom [Patriarch Kirill] claims to defend, a deliberate reversal of perpetrator and victim, and [the] open support of the ideology of the murderous regime” by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

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Video: The Russian Orthodox Church and/in/after the War: Interview with Jerry Pankhurst and Alar Kilp

https://youtu.be/m-6rSFdE8MY Sociologist of religion Jerry Pankhurst (Wittenberg University) and political scientist Alar Kilp (University of Tartu) discuss the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian-Ukrainian war, explain why Moscow Patriarch Kirill supports Putin, and…

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