For Ukrainians in a Russia-tied church, war brings a crisis of faith

Inside the 16th-century Orthodox Christian monastery’s cavernous cathedral – where the ornate gilt interior is hung with religious icons, and the air is thickly scented with burning candles and incense – a crisis of faith swirls among black-clad monks and parishioners standing for an hourslong service.

For centuries, Sviatohirsk Monastery and nearly all Orthodox churches in eastern Ukraine have been officially loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate.

Indeed, despite the widespread destruction of Ukraine wrought by Russia’s 15-month-old invasion, this service includes a traditional request to pray for the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, who has unabashedly backed President Vladimir Putin and supported the war as a “metaphysical struggle.”

The historic attachment to Russia has led critics – which include the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – to consider such Orthodox churches and their adherents in Ukraine to be a pro-Russian fifth column that is especially dangerous in wartime.

So it is a surprise to find the slight, bearded Ukrainian soldier among the believers here, standing in prayer with his boots soaked and camouflage trousers dirty from fighting Russian troops in muddy trenches.

Soldier Georgii, in fact, embodies the challenges and questions faced by this community of believers, which has always looked to Moscow for ecumenical leadership but now sees the Russian church backing calls for the annihilation of the Ukrainian nation.

“Of course, people changed their mindset. ... Russia has shown its other face, and people see it now,” says Georgii, who twice has been concussed by Russian bombs and recently lost a friend in fighting in Bakhmut.

“I was coming with the same question to the priest,” he says, about the continued call to pray for Patriarch Kirill in Moscow. He was told that no synod has been held yet to officially change the practice.

“The Bible says if a person has lost the way, and is a sinner, we can still pray for them,” says Georgii, who asked that only his first name be used. He says he was drawn since childhood to what is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

He rejects charges that the church serves as a fifth column, and notes that Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Moscow-tied church in Ukraine, immediately condemned the Russian invasion as a “repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother.”

“This church is praying for the Ukrainian Army, for Ukrainian soldiers, for the Ukrainian state, and for peace in Ukraine,” says Georgii. “From the first day, this church has blamed Russia for the invasion.”

As he speaks at the end of the service, church bells peal. Soon after, the thumping sounds of a distant artillery duel punctuate his words.

“I am for this church. I am a believer in this church,” says Georgii. “And I fight [for Ukraine] in this war.”

“Never on the side of aggression”

Above him, the walls of the monastery and its church buildings are damaged by shrapnel.

When the Russians occupied Sviatohirsk from June to September 2022, they could only advance to the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River, across the water from the monastery. Fighting destroyed much of the town; one of the direct strikes on the monastery caused three deaths.

The contradictions for believers of Ukraine’s Moscow-loyalist churches came to a head in early April, when the head of Kyiv’s most prominent monastery was placed under house arrest on charges of justifying Russia’s invasion. Metropolitan Pavlo denied the accusations, telling a judge he was “never on the side of aggression and never will be.”

But the SBU – which has arrested dozens of clergy from the Moscow-linked church across the country for alleged subversion – takes a different view.

“A robe is not always a guarantee of pure intentions,” the SBU said in an April statement. “Today the enemy is trying to use the church environment to promote its propaganda and divide Ukrainian society.”

Questions have risen about the long-term significance of divisions within the Orthodox community, over whether believers in the Moscow-linked church can become fully part of post-war Ukrainian society when they often see the current war as a test of their own faith.

Official concerns are echoed by the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which four years ago was granted “autocephaly” by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodoxy, in a move rejected by Moscow.

Since Russia’s invasion began, the newer Ukraine church has seen a surge of priests and their congregations eager to join it and cut ties with Moscow.

People “had their eyes opened”

Among those receiving converts is Father Vitalii, who wears a black hat and a large worn metal cross around his neck. He dismisses the Moscow Patriarchate as a “KGB church,” revitalized on the orders of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin and the KGB security service in the 1940s, after decades of persecution and systematic destruction by previous Russian and Soviet leaders.

“I don’t perceive them as an enemy; I have no aggression toward the church and the people of this church,” says Father Vitalii, speaking in a small modern church hall in Kramatorsk. “But you have to understand that in a country at war, fighting an aggressor for a long time already, there is no place for the church of this [aggressor] country.”

He knows members of Ukraine’s Orthodox flock who have changed their minds about the Russian-linked church, but still, others who, “when [Russian] rockets land near their house, still say it is the Ukrainians shooting at themselves – they can’t believe they come from Russia,” he says.

“I can’t trust a person who says they are pro-Ukrainian and still goes to the Moscow church. I understand that this person is hiding something in himself,” he adds. “Many more people are joining our church. They have had their eyes opened.”

The road to such a reckoning can be long, incomplete, and filled with rumor and uncertainty.

Not far from the Sviatohirsk Monastery, for example, in the town of Bohorodychne, the Church of the Holy Mother and convent were both largely destroyed by Russian airstrikes, before Russian troops occupied the area for months last year.

Two large onion dome cupolas with tall gilt crosses have toppled to the ground. The nearest house has also been destroyed, its roof gone; a salvaged stove and kitchenware are in the yard.

The tearful house owner, who gives the name Liubov, nods toward the wrecked church, and says, “When I see that, I just want to die.” She says she doesn’t know which side’s bombardment dismembered her church – though it is widely known to have been Russia – or damaged her house.

“How can we live without a church?” she asks.

Trauma and confusion

The traumatic and confusing impact of the war on the community of believers of the Moscow-linked church is clear at the small Sviatohirsk Church of All Saints, in a district that saw widespread destruction.

Church members consider it a “miracle” that while artillery and rocket strikes burned buildings on the church compound, the church itself was only struck by a few pieces of shrapnel. An unexploded rocket is still embedded in the street, a few strides away.

“When I hear their confessions, people just start crying, because it was so hard,” says Deacon Dmytro, a cleric from western Ukraine who wears a thick black beard and robes to match, speaking before an Easter-related service that included a call to pray for the Moscow patriarch.

“I can see that people became more united,” says Deacon Dmytro. “Before they were coming to church and leaving, like a duty. Now they really feel like they are united and they need this. Even if there were some people here who were sympathetic to Russia, they were not talking about that openly, and it’s not influencing the faith.”

Among church volunteers is a woman who also gives the name Liubov, which means “love.” During the service, the pensioner with a powder-blue headscarf helps light and extinguish prayer candles. The next morning she cleans the Moscow-linked church.

Liubov recalls tearfully how a friend, also active in the church, was killed last June when a shell pierced the roof of her kitchen.

“It had a very strong impact on me; she was my sister in faith,” says Liubov. “She was very kind and always wanted to give food to everyone. Growing big bell peppers was her favorite thing. She had this generous Russian soul.”

When asked about any pressure felt by the Moscow-loyalist congregation, Liubov says, “The church doesn’t do politics. ... Let’s not bring it here.”

“I am the person who loves everyone,” she adds. “There are people here who hate everyone. [But] God is love. God will decide who is right and wrong.”  

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.