A Medieval Narrative Resurfaces in Putin's Vision for the World

Protest against war in Ukraine during Russian TV news 0:50

(CNN) --

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered various explanations for his country's war against Ukraine, and some are more plausible than others.

Among them, stopping NATO's advance towards Russia's borders, protecting their compatriots from "genocide" or the unfounded claim to "denazify" Ukraine.

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The highest-ranking priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, meanwhile, gave a very different reason for the invasion: gay pride parades.

Patriarch Kirill said last week that the conflict is an extension of a fundamental culture clash between the wider Russian world and Western liberal values, exemplified by expressions of gay pride.

However, experts say Kirill's comments offer an important spiritual insight for Putin on a return to a Russian Empire in which the Orthodox religion plays a key role.

But the Russian patriarch's hard-line stance is also costing him followers.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam announced this Sunday that it was breaking ties with the leader, the last of the priests and churches to leave Moscow due to the war in Ukraine.

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"Russian World"

"Putin has been proposing this concept of the so-called Russian World and that concept is based on Russian Orthodoxy," Victoria Smolkin, an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University, told CNN.

"The Russian World is wherever there are Russian speakers, the Russian World is wherever there is a Russian church, it does not recognize existing political borders," Smolkin said.

Putin's vision is supported by Kirill, who also sees Ukraine as an integral and historical part of his Russian church, Georg Michels, a history professor at the University of California, Riverside, told CNN.

"Early in the war, Patriarch Kirill delivered a sermon highlighting the God-given unity of Ukraine and Russia," Michels said in an interview with UC Riverside News.

"Kirill denounced the 'evil forces' in Ukraine who want to destroy this unit," Michels explained.

Last Sunday, Kirill went a step further during a sermon in Moscow when he specifically linked these "evil forces" to gay pride events.

According to the patriarch, the war in Ukraine has to do with "a fundamental rejection of the so-called values ​​offered today by those who claim world power", that is, the West.

Orthodox priests and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (right) attend a mass at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior in April.

The "test" for which side you're on, Kirill said, is whether your country is willing to hold gay pride parades.

"To enter the club of those countries, it is necessary to hold a gay pride parade. Not to make a political statement, 'we are with you,' not to sign any agreement, but to hold a gay parade," he said during the sermon. of March 6.

"If we see violations of [God's] law, we will never put up with those who destroy this law, blurring the line between holiness and sin, and even more so those who promote sin as an example or as one of the models of behavior human," Kirill said.

"Around this issue there is a real war today," he added.

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Kirill's speech denounced the infiltration of Western liberal values ​​into the hearts and minds of what he says are the historically unified and Orthodox Ukrainian and Russian people.

"He's saying that there's a clash of civilizations and that the gay pride parades in this narrative are a litmus test of which side you're on," Smolkin said.

Despite calls for Kirill to denounce Putin's war, the "Russian pope" has not only refused to do so, but has given the invasion moral legitimacy by calling it a struggle of "metaphysical meaning", of humanity who chooses to follow the laws of God.

"The Russian Orthodox Church is providing much of the symbolism and ideology that Putin has used to cement his popularity," Michels added.

The importance of Kyiv

The city of Kyiv is highly symbolic for both Putin and Kirill due to its connection to Vladimir I, a medieval ruler of Kyiv Rus' — a territory that included parts of present-day Ukraine and Russia — who converted to Christianity around year 988.

"According to today's dominant Russian nationalist opinion, Vladimir was the founding father of the first Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church. State and Church formed a productive symbiosis and Kyiv became the cradle of Russian civilization," Michels wrote. .

"Putin considers Vladimir the savior of Russia," Michels told CNN.

"For him, Kyiv and Crimea, where Vladimir was baptized, are sacred Russian lands."

The Christianization of Kyiv Rus' is the founding narrative on which Putin and Kirill claim Ukraine as part of Russia.

"They're trying to rip out this legacy of Kyiv Rus' for Russia and that's a really critical part of Putin's view of history and the role of Russian Orthodoxy in that history," Smolkin said.

"What Putin is claiming is that he is restoring the natural God-given order of things: that Ukrainians and Russians have always been one people and everyone knows it because they all come from Kyiv Rus' and they are all Orthodox."

Kirill's speeches have also reinforced this idea that Western powers interfere with the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.

Russian Patriarch Kirill leads a Christmas mass at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Jan. 6.

Three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kirill said in a speech: "We must not let dark and hostile external forces laugh at us, we must do everything possible to maintain peace between our peoples and at the same time protect our common historical homeland of all external actions that can destroy this unity".

Smolkin claims that Kirill's rhetoric is intended to show that the division between Ukrainians and Russians has been sown from abroad.

He thus characterizes the Russian nationalist theory of the patriarch: "If the Ukrainians think that they are a different people from the Russians, it is only because they have been carried away by the West, which has sowed discord between these harmonious brothers."

In 2016, after the invasion of Crimea, a monument to Vladimir was erected in the very center of Moscow.

Before that, the other great monument to Vladimir, erected in 1888, was in the center of Kyiv.

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Trouble in the queues

Kirill is also likely to support Putin's war because he has recently lost power over several Ukrainian Orthodox churches.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has for centuries had special historical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, a relationship that differentiated it from other independent Orthodox churches, such as those of Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and others that are part of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

In 2018, after the invasion of Crimea, part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church severed its ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, an act that raised the ire of the Russian patriarch.

"For Patriarch Kirill," Michels said, "this is a matter of life and death."

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, there are even more signs of growing discontent in the broader Orthodox ranks.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam announced on Sunday that it was breaking ties with Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate due to the latter's stance on the war.

"This decision is extremely painful and difficult for all involved," the Amsterdam Church of St. Nicholas of Myra wrote on its website.

Some 300 Orthodox priests and deacons, including many who live and work in Russia, also risked disobeying their leader and their country by publicly signing a letter calling for an immediate ceasefire.

"The Church is not a communist party that only speaks through its leader," said Russian Orthodox priest Father Andrey Kordochkin, dean of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Magdalena in Madrid, and a signer of the letter.

Kordochkin noted that the letter mentions the word "war" four times, a word that is now illegal to print in Russian media.

"It is an act of courage," he said, "especially for those of us who are physically in Russia, because we have families and we are very vulnerable."

"I am inspired by Russian exiles of the 20th century," Kordochkin added.

"I'm on a good list."

The governing body of the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which remains linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, called on Kirill to ask the Russian government to stop the war.

A man lights a candle at an Orthodox church in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 24.

(Photo: Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

"Your Holiness! We ask you... to call on the leaders of the Russian Federation to immediately stop the hostilities that already threaten to escalate into a world war," the bishops wrote in an open letter on Feb. 28.

Another Ukrainian Orthodox leader, Metropolitan Epiphanius, whose church is independent from Moscow, had even stronger words.

"The spirit of the Antichrist operates in the leader of Russia," he wrote in a February 27 statement.

"This was Hitler during World War II. This is what Putin has become today."

In a significant act of estrangement from Kirill, 12 Russian Orthodox dioceses in Ukraine withdrew his name from their prayers during the Divine Liturgy, at the instruction of their bishops.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis has so far refrained from asking Kirill to condemn the war, and has not publicly condemned Putin or Russia by name, despite their fervent calls to end the war.

Other Catholic Church officials, however, are not so reticent.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin quickly distanced the Catholic Church from Patriarch Kirill's sermon demonizing gay pride parades, saying they risked "exacerbating" the situation.

• Pope Francis calls Russia's invasion of Ukraine a "massacre"

The president of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, wrote a letter directly to Kirill on March 2: "I ask you, brother, to make an appeal to Vladimir Putin to stop the senseless war against the Ukrainian people." .

He also asked Kirill to urge Russian soldiers to refuse his orders, saying "refusing to follow orders in such a situation is a moral obligation."

Father Antonio Spadaro SJ, a close adviser to Francis and editor of the semi-official Vatican and Jesuit magazine "La Civilta Cattolica," gave voice to what many in the Catholic and Orthodox world are wondering right now.

"The question of all questions is: what is Patriarch Kirill doing and what will he do?"

Spadaro said in an interview with the Italian news agency Adnkronos last week.

That question, in light of Kirill's statements so far, seems to have been widely answered.

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