Today’s Russian Orthodox leadership is a theological, moral, and pastoral train wreck. U.S. foreign policy can’t fix that. Nonetheless, those responsible for devising U.S. foreign policy should recognize how that train wreck helps define Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine, even as it conditions any resolution of the war worthy of the name “peace.”
This past January 7, the traditional Russian Orthodox Christmas, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’ declared that Russia is fighting a “biblical battle” in Ukraine against the “decadent West.” This blasphemy has infected Russia far beyond its metropolitan centers; thus, a new booklet published by the Russian Orthodox Raifa Bogoroditsky Monastery in far-off Tatarstan declared the Russian war on Ukraine a “manifestation of active love” while denouncing those who dared oppose Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” (which has cost Russia some 700,000 casualties) as “cowards” and “traitors.”
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