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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The Deep Constitution of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church

Mikhail Antonov is a professor of law associated with the Law Faculty of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg.

At the formal level, the Russian Constitution provides a standard set of antidiscrimination guarantees that are similar to many constitutions of Western countries. It proclaims Russia to be a democratic Rechtsstaat (Article 1) and enumerates a solid list of inalienable rights and freedoms in Chapter 2. In particular, Article 13 guarantees ideological diversity and prohibits any state ideology; Article 14 establishes that Russia is a secular state in which there shall be no state or obligatory religion and that religious associations are separated from the State and equal before the law.

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