Parts of the centuries-old Pechersk Lavra monastic complex in Kyiv, Ukraine, have been taken over by the state. The Ukrainian government has taken the main cathedral of a historic monastery in Kyiv from a denomination previously affiliated with the Russian Orthodox patriarchate and allowed its Ukrainian rival group to use it for Orthodox Christmas services. Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr …
While Russia has sought to justify its assault on Ukraine with complaints about NATO’s eastward expansion, it has also claimed that foreign actors have encroached on its religious turf in Ukraine — even alleging the United States helped instigate an Eastern Orthodox schism there. Moscow Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said both the West and a rival …
Ukraine’s tangled political history with Russia has its counterpart in the religious landscape, with Ukraine’s majority Orthodox Christian population divided between an independent-minded group based in Kyiv and another loyal to its patriarch in Moscow. Even though Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine in part as a defense of the Moscow-oriented Orthodox church, leaders of both Ukrainian …
