Ukraine: Study highlights religious dimension associated with conflict

A researcher who carried out a doctoral thesis at the University of Coimbra (UC) on the Orthodox Church in Russian-Ukrainian relations highlighted that the war is almost impossible to understand without looking at the religious dimension.

The doctoral thesis, entitled “The Russian Orthodox Church and the State in Russian-Ukrainian foreign policy relations: variations and absences of space”, explores the role and positioning of the Moscow Patriarchate in domestic and foreign policy and argues that the idea of ​​sacred space is important to understand the Kremlin's rhetoric, especially after the Russian invasion, the author, Pedro Constantino, told Lusa news agency.

Research into this religious dimension began long before the Russian invasion, with the researcher wanting to understand the relationship between State and Church, and whether the Russian Orthodox Church was an instrument of the State or had its own diplomatic strategy, also exploring the perspective of non-sacred and sacred space (made up of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Moldova and some Central Asian countries), he explained.

For his thesis, he interviewed Orthodox priests outside the space considered sacred by the Moscow Patriarchate, analyzed speeches, reports and various documentation and authors.

From interviews with Orthodox priests outside the sacred space, Peter Constantine concluded that the Moscow Patriarchate takes a pragmatic stance, promoting relations with other religions and churches, which does not happen within the sacred space.

For the researcher, the Moscow Patriarchate is not just a religious institution, but an influential political and diplomatic actor, present at meetings of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, assuming itself, at times, as “an advanced force” for the regime led by Vladimir Putin.

To understand the Russian invasion, Peter Constantine also points to the schism of 2019, when the Orthodox Church of Ukraine separated from the Moscow Patriarchate and began to answer to Constantinople.

From that moment of rupture, Patriarch Kirill (leader of the Russian Orthodox Church) “adopted all that aggressiveness and assertiveness of the Kremlin” in his speech, radically changing his stance, highlights the researcher, recalling that before, when Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, the patriarchate “remained more or less silent”.

“For the Church, there were no borders, because Ukraine was a continuation of its sacred space. The annexation of Crimea, for the patriarch, probably only created problems for him,” he said.

In Pedro Constantino's view, when Putin speaks of a historical unity between Russians and Ukrainians, he is using “an ultra-religious discourse”, in which the issue of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) does not assume the same relevance as the identity perspective, transforming the war “into an existential issue for Russia”.

Although the conflict is also a question of geoeconomics and geopolitics, it is also a question of identity, he stressed.

In the conflict itself, religion is present in a very literal way, whether with Ukrainian priests murdered or Russian Orthodox priests expelled with accusations of working for Moscow's secret services, or the Kremlin's intention to bomb churches associated with the Kiev Patriarchate, he noted.

“We cannot disconnect religion from what is happening,” he stressed, considering that this dimension could also play a role in resolving the conflict, which is not just between States.

“If we analyze this dimension for other conflicts, such as in the case of Israel, we see the issue of sacred space also present,” he stated, considering that religion supports and justifies, in part, the imperialist causes that seem to have returned in the 21st century.