The Russia-Ukraine War and Religion: One Year after the Beginning of the Invasion

In March 2022, after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine had begun, we published a series exploring the role of religion in the war. In that series, we argued that the religious component of the 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 threats to religious freedom in territories under Russian control.

Commemorating the first-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion, we provide an update on these topics.

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Both Symptom and Cause: Four Problems in Eastern Orthodoxy Reflected in the Ukraine War

Jerry G. Pankhurst is professor emeritus of sociology and of Russian and Central Eurasian studies at Wittenberg University.

From its first phase starting in the Euromaidan protests and the “Revolution of Dignity” of 2014 to the present calamitous phase, the war in Ukraine has precipitated a deep review of the state of Eastern Orthodoxy among theologians and among secular scholars who understand the societal impact of religion as well as the personal influence of one’s own faith.

In one sense, the war in Ukraine is a symptom of problems endemic to Eastern Orthodoxy; in some measure, the war is only possible against the backdrop of these broader problems. On the other hand, given the free actions of Russian Patriarch Kirill and others in leadership in the Russian Orthodox Church, the war is also a cause of the current manifestation of these problems across the Orthodox world.

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The Effects of War and Collaboration on Trust in Ukraine

Catherine Wanner is a professor of History and Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. 

As the anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is commemorated, there are many reasons why Ukrainians insist that global support must not waiver for Ukrainian forces and their fight to secure Ukrainian sovereignty. Russian leaders have demonstrated that they believe their possession of nuclear arms translates into an ability to exercise imperial ambitions by violating international law with impunity. Russia watchers the world over have long connected the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the inciting of an armed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the 1990–92 manufactured “frozen conflict” in Transdniestria, Moldova, which borders western Ukraine, and the Russian seizure of 20 percent of Georgian territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008. In each instance, similar tactics were deployed to destabilize a neighboring former Soviet republic to expand Russian domination in the region. Analogous forms of brutal Russian aggression to those we have witnessed for one year in Ukraine were preceded by wanton destruction of civilian populations and civilian infrastructure in the Russian republic of Chechnya in 1992 and 1995 and in Syria beginning in 2015 against opponents of the vicious regime of Bashar al-Assad.

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