On January 7 The New York Times reported that Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department of Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate and one of the highest officials in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in a radio interview that the ROC should serve as a mediator between the state and the people. Two days earlier Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader, had called for just such a role by the Church: “I would very much like for the Russian Orthodox Church to take up such a role in society, so that all conflicting sides would seek and accept its mediation.” Although Chaplin did not mention Navalny, it is reasonable to assume that he was responding to the latter’s appeal—and indeed that he was, in this very broadcast, initiating precisely this sort of mediation. He did not endorse the recent demonstrations, but he said that Russia would never be the same after these demonstrations and that a government that did not respond to popular concerns would be “slowly eaten alive”. He called for a national dialogue including all “patriotically inclined” people, not just the urban middle class that was staging the demonstrations. He specifically said that the charges of fraud in the recent parliamentary elections must be addressed.
Fifteen minutes after Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported on the Chaplin interview, another Church spokesman announced that on the next day Patriarch Kiril I would give “a very important interview” on Rossiya 1, the main television channel. And so he did—on Saturday, January 7, which is the day when Orthodox Christmas is celebrated. The Times again reported on this on the following day. Reuters had a somewhat fuller report. (Interfax apparently carried the full text of Kiril’s address, but I could not access it in English.)
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