War and Religion: Views from Within Ukraine's 'Russian' Church

ZOiS REPORT Nr. 6 / 2024 · December 2024 WAR AND RELIGION VIEWS FROM WITHIN UKRAINE’S ‘RUSSIAN’ CHURCH Andriy Fert ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 2 Content 02 ___ Summary 04 ___ Introduction 07 ___ Methodology 07 ___ Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine 08 ___ Public disapproval of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church 09 ______ Links to Russia 09 ______ Pro-Russia views 10 ______ Misrepresentation by the media 10 ______ Church communications problem 11 ___ Challenges of adaptation 12 ______ Improving communications 12 ______ Introducing the Ukrainian language to church services 13 ______ Veneration of problematic saints 14 ___ Re-affiliation to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine 15 ______ Views of the OCU 16 ______ Reasons (not) to re-affiliate 16 ___ Conclusions 17 ___ Imprint Summary Russia’s war against Ukraine has changed Ukraine’s religious landscape. Due to its ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), once the biggest Christian denomination in the country, has faced declining membership, public scrutiny and restrictive government policies. This report focuses on the perspectives of rank-and-file UOC members regarding public disapproval of their church. Based on qualitative interviews conducted with priests and parishioners in nine parishes in 2024, it provides insights into the mood within the UOC and its members’ (un)willingness to change their religious practices and affiliation against the backdrop of growing anti-Russian sentiment in Ukrainian society. These are the main findings: – Most interviewees attribute the current public disapproval of the UOC to the misrepresentation of their church in the media. However, a few acknowledge that the church also bears some blame, arguing that its leaders failed to effectively communicate their break with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2022 or condemn instances of collaborationism within the church. While many believe that the church leaders should improve their communications with society, most interviewees doubt that this will help to change public sentiment or alleviate state pressure on the church. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 3 – With few exceptions, the interviewees are not in favour of changing the language of UOC religious services from Church Slavonic to Ukrainian. They explain their reluctance with reference to habit and theological considerations. At the same time, some concede that if Ukrainian society perceives Church Slavonic as Russian, it might be helpful to introduce elements of Ukrainian into the liturgy. However, only a few parishes have taken this step to date. – Since February 2022, UOC members have been under pressure from society, the media, and the authorities to switch their affiliation to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the church that now has the largest share of support in Ukraine. For most of my interviewees, re-affiliating with this ‘rival’ church is not an option. Yet several expressed a readiness to re-affiliate, provided the whole parish agree to do so. Only two priests were ready to change affiliation if it means protecting their parish and retaining a place of worship. – Interviewees by and large echo internal UOC propaganda about the illegitimacy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and describe the state policy towards their church as religious persecution. Yet many challenge these narratives, acknowledge the religious validity of the OCU, and deny that religious persecution is taking place in Ukraine. Even those who subscribe to anti-OCU narratives still say that many OCU priests and parishioners they know personally are good Christians. – Roughly half of the interviewees admit that there are some pro-Russia people in their church. The concept ‘pro-Russia’ varies from interviewee to interviewee. For some, it includes those who believe that Russia and Ukraine should be united, that Ukraine is to blame for the war, or that the bonds between the UOC and the Russian Orthodox Church should be preserved. Others speak of people who are ‘indirectly pro-Russia’ — those who think that Russian culture is superior, refuse to take sides in the ongoing war, or are critical of what they see as the anti-Christian agenda of Ukraine and the West. – Nearly all of my interviewees are dismissive of politics as something they do not, under any circumstances, want their church to be involved in. For them, the term encompasses everything that has nothing to do with prayer, one’s relationship with God, and parish life. Their resistance to engaging in debates about the veneration of Russian saints in the UOC, autocephaly or language change is palpable in our conversations. Politics is thus a concept the interviewees use to justify their apolitical stance and discursively shield themselves from what they see as hostile and wrong. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 4 Introduction Russia’s war against Ukraine has triggered profound changes across Ukrainian society, and the field of religion is no exception. Ukraine’s dominant religion is Orthodox Christianity, which first came to the country in the tenth century ( see A Short History of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine below). Today, Ukraine has two separate Orthodox Churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).1 Although both share the same dogmatic teaching, each church questions the religious validity of the other. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine emerged in 2018 – 19 from the pro-independence movements that had sought to break ties with Russia’s religious leadership since the early twentieth century. By contrast, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a name to which many people add ‘of the Moscow Patriarchate’, has been distinguished by its subordination to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Once the largest Christian denomination in the country,2 it now faces the prospect of gradual dissolution — parish by parish — due to what the Ukrainian government believes are links to Russia. 1 On the history of this split in Ukrainian Orthodoxy, see Nicolas Denysenko, The Orthodox Church in Ukraine. A Century of Separation (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018). 2 ShortlybeforetheRevolutionofDignity(2013 – 14)andtheannexationofCrimea(2014),20 percentofUkrainiansclaimedtobelongtotheUOC,whileapproximately19percentclaimed to belong to the OCU predecessors: the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Autocephalous Church. See: https://razumkov.org.ua/upload/Przh_Religion_2013.pdf. The history of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine is bound up with the nation’s political and cultural development. Its origins can be traced back to the tenth century, when Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv introduced Orthodox Christianity to his dominion. For centuries to come, the church became a powerful institution that preserved a sense of local identity, especially after the Ukrainian lands were incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When a shortlived Ukrainian state brought about by a rebellion against the Poles was absorbed by Russia in the late seventeenth century, the Ukrainian ecclesiastical authority known as the Metropolis of Kyiv was subordinated to the Bishop of Moscow. The church would thereafter prove instrumental in promoting Russian political and cultural domination. The rise of the Ukrainian national movement in the twentieth century ignited pro-independence aspirations within the church, resulting in the proclamation of autocephaly — ecclesiastical independence — by some clerics in the early 1920s. However, the advent of the Soviet era brought that autocephaly to an abrupt end. Although openly hostile towards religion, the Soviets nevertheless supported the Russian Orthodox Church’s claims on Ukraine in a bid to help them rule over its diverse population. No wonder that when the Soviet Union collapsed, many clerics in Ukraine decided to separate from Moscow, while many others opted to stay with the Russian Church. As a result, Ukraine now has two competing Orthodox Churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) historically subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that emerged in 2018 – 19. A Short History of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 5 Since 2019, the number of OCU parishes has gradually been approaching that of the UOC.3 But there is a huge discrepancy in the numbers of people who claim to belong to each Church — 42.2 per cent of Ukrainians feel affiliated with the OCU compared to just 5.6 per cent with the UOC, according to the latest research. FIGURE 1 The UOC has seen an almost three-fold drop in affiliation since the Russian invasion began in 2022, and different surveys suggest that this is due to people’s distrust in what they see as a ‘Russian’ church.4 The UOC relations with the Moscow Patriarchate are complicated. In 1990, the UOC gained autonomy in managing its internal affairs but remained subordinated to Moscow in matters of external relations and religious practice. In 2022, the UOC proclaimed its independence from the Moscow Patriarchate.5 However, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience — the governmental agency responsible for religious affairs in Ukraine — called that move into doubt in 2023, arguing that to become genuinely independent, the church would have had to proclaim autocephaly — the status of ecclesiastic self-governance ( see Autocephaly in the Orthodox Church, p. 6) — something the UOC never actually did.6 3 AccordingtotheStateServiceforEthnopoliticsandFreedomofConscience,on1January 2024theUOChad10,586parishes,whiletheOCUhad8,075.See:https://docs.google.com/ spreadsheets/d/1vcq1ulAaH8jEOY6HcJyq0GTmDo3SEW6F/edit?gid=39530429#gid=39530429. 4 SeethefindingsofsurveysbytheRazumkovCentre(https://razumkov.org.ua/ images/2023/12/19/2023-Religiya-F.pdf)andtheKyivInternationalInstituteofSociology (https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1129&page=5 and https://kiis.com.ua/?lan g=ukr&cat=reports&id=1404&page=1). 5 AnatoliiBabynskyi,‘UOC-MPAsserts‘Full’IndependenceatSurpriseSolemnSobor’,ThePillar, 28 May 2022, https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/uoc-mp-asserts-full-independence. 6 ‘Vysnovok relihiieznavchoi ekspertyzy Statutu pro upravlinnia Ukrainskoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvy nanaiavnisttserkovno-kanonichnohozviazkuzMoskovskympatriarkhatom’,27January2023, https://dess.gov.ua/vysnovok-relihiieznavchoi-ekspertyzy-statutu-pro-upravlinnia-ukrainskoipravoslavnoi-tserkvy/. 42.2% 5.6% 12.6% 0.4% 39.2% Orthodox Church of Ukraine Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) I am just Orthodox No idea I am not Orthodox Diagrammtitel FIGURE 1 Which Orthodox Church do you identify with? Source: ‘Religiosity, Trust in the Church, Confessional Affiliation and Inter-church Relations in Ukrainian Society (November, 2023)’, Razumkov Centre, 28 December 2023, https://razumkov.org.ua/en/research-areas/surveys/religiosity-trust-in-thechurch-confessional-affiliation-and-inter-church-relations-in-ukrainian-society-november-2023. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 6 In recent years, the UOC has been in the national news for numerus scandals related to collaborationism or the promotion of pro-Russia narratives.7 A survey of public opinion in spring 2024 found that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians did not trust the UOC and supported the idea of allout ban of this denomination. FIGURE 2 The government has also recently passed legislation making it possible to disband UOC parishes and structures should links to Russia be found.8 7 SeethemostrecentmediamonotoringofUOCrepresentation:Instytutmasovoiinformatsii, ‘Vidkomplimentivdo“vyhnanniabisiv”:mediinatraiektoriiaUPTsMoskovskohopatriarkhatu’, 18 April 2023, https://imi.org.ua/monitorings/vid-komplimentiv-do-vygnannya-bisiv-medijnatrayektoriya-upts-moskovskogo-patriarhatu-i52196. 8 VerkhovnaRadaUkrainy,‘ProektZakonuprovnesenniazmindodeiakykhzakonivUkrainyshchodo diialnosti v Ukraini relihiinykh orhanizatsii’, https://itd.rada.gov.ua/billInfo/Bills/Card/41219. The Orthodox Church is not a centralised institution ruled by one religious leader; rather, it is a fellowship of several territorial churches united by doctrine and mutual recognition. Some territorial churches correspond to nation states, while others are relics of different empires in terms of their territorial claims (e.g. the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, or the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople). When a territorial Orthodox church has the status of autocephaly that effectively means that this church has complete independence from other territorial churches in all matters related to its self-government, rituals, celebrations, and so on. There is no consensus among the clergy on how to achieve autocephaly, on what grounds it can be requested, and who should recognise a given church as autocephalous. Each case of autocephaly is unique, but since the nineteenth century the view that a nation state requires its own autocephalous church has become widespread among some Orthodox clergy. Autocephaly in the Orthodox Church 12% 20% 63% 5% Do nothing and do not interfere in the affairs of the UOC. Investigate only the offences of individual representatives of the church Establish state supervision and control the activities of the UOC and its representatives, but do not ban it completely Completely ban the UOC in Ukraine Don’t know Diagrammtitel FIGURE 2 In your opinion, what policy should the Ukrainian authorities adopt regarding the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)? Source: ‘What Should be the Government’s Policy and Trust in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)’, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 7 May 2024, https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1404&page=1. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church  7 This report concerns the UOC. It does not ask whether the accusations against the church are true or false, nor does it enter into the discussion over the nature of its current relations with the Moscow Patriarchate. Instead, it explores how rank-and-file church members — parish priests and their parishioners — explain the existing public disapproval of the UOC. The report analyses their discourse with a view to understanding the mindset of UOC members, what compels them to act, and what they are ready to change to alleviate public pressure. Methodology This report draws on twenty-seven in-depth semi-structured interviews with parish priests and parishioners from nine parishes across Ukraine. The parishes were mostly urban and small, with one parish located in a rural area. I recruited interviewees between January and October 2024 using a snowball sampling approach. In some cases, the parish priests recommended parishioners I could interview; in others, parishioners volunteered to be interviewed or I convinced them to do an interview without letting their priest know. In one parish, interviews with the parishioners were conducted by my assistant, who was an insider and thus more trustworthy in the eyes of the parish. The ongoing war was a factor in people’s readiness to express certain beliefs. Many of my interviewees mentioned people with what they believed were pro-Russia views, yet none of them acknowledged having such views themselves. None of the people my interviewees described as ‘pro-Russia’ agreed to be interviewed. As a result, the report could only analyse ‘proRussia’ views in the UOC based on secondary sources. The interviews were complemented by my observations in some of the parishes, and a dozen informal conversations with clerics and believers who for various reasons declined to give interviews. Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine Although more than sixty per cent of the population claim to be Orthodox, Ukraine is nevertheless a secular country, where religious authorities have very little influence on political decision-making and private life. As anthropologist Catherine Wanner shows, most Ukrainians who call themselves Orthodox are not religious in the sense of following the teachings of religious authorities, knowing church doctrine, or regularly attending church services.9 Some of them go to a specific cathedral at Easter to get holy water, but otherwise never set foot in church. Some hang icons of the Mother of God from their rear-view mirrors but do not know any prayers by heart. Some simply believe in God and are concerned about Russian influence on the Orthodox Church, but do not partake in religious rituals. 9 CatherineWanner,Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine(Ithaca,NewYork: Cornell University Press, 2022). ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 8 The establishment of the OCU in 2018 – 19 demonstrated that many Ukrainians — regardless of church attendance — want a church that is independent from Russia.10 Most people also support the ban on the UOC. This can be attributed to growing anti-Russian sentiment in Ukrainian society and the widespread perception that Orthodox Christianity is an important part of Ukrainian national identity.11 There are other reasons why the OCU is more popular: Unlike the UOC, it is autocephalous, uses the Ukrainian language in services, and embodies the idea of redressing historical injustices inflicted in the context of Russian colonial domination. For UOC clergy and their parishioners, it is highly problematic that people who are not members of the church can call themselves Orthodox and have a say in internal church business. They are generally unwilling to deal with the demands of people who they do not consider members of their church. Some of my interviewees — sometimes without admitting it — reframe their church as simply another religion that should be governed by its own rules without being accountable to society at large. Public disapproval of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Attitudes to the UOC in Ukraine have been generally negative since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and they worsened significantly after 2022. For UOC spokesmen, the pressure exerted by the state and society on the church is akin to religious persecution, and they point to many instances where the authorities have taken illegal actions against UOC parishes.12 Indeed, following the full-scale Russian invasion, many local authorities passed decrees prohibiting the ‘activities of the Moscow Patriarchate’ in their territories — a decision sometimes followed by a unilateral termination of lease agreements on municipally-owned property that UOC parishes used for worship. Despite their shaky legal foundations, the decrees mostly remain in force. Most of the priests and parishioners interviewed for this report have not faced pressure from the local authorities. In two cases, however, the regional authorities (Oblast Council) passed decrees prohibiting the UOC. Their local counterparts (Town or Village Councils) subsequently terminated the leases on plots on which UOC temples were built. But, as the affected parishioners explained, these lease terminations have never been enforced. The pressure UOC members face at the local level is often of a different nature. It is exerted by family members, colleagues, or acquaintances, who ask 10 RazumkovCentre,‘StavlenniahromadianUkrainydostvorenniapomisnoiavtokefal′noipravoslavnoitserkvy’,December2018,https://razumkov.org.ua/images/sociology/2019_01_09/ dynamic_avtocefalii.pdf. 11 PewResearchCenter,‘ReligiousBeliefandNationalBelonginginCentralandEasternEurope’, 10May2017,https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/05/10/religious-belief-and-nationalbelonging-in-central-and-eastern-europe/. 12 ‘VUPTsMPzaiavylypro“zakhoplennia”pivtorytysiachiparafii’,RelighiinaPravda,10April2024, https://religionpravda.com.ua/?p=91804. Source: © The Presidential Administration of Ukraine Former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko with the head of the OCU Metropolitan Epiphaniy on the day the church was officially established in December 2018 ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church  9 them questions like ‘when will you stop going to that church?’. Parishioner A. recalls how in a train his fellow traveller learnt of his religious affiliation and spent the whole trip trying to persuade him to leave the church for good. And Father A. talks about a parishioner whose husband threatened her until she left the UOC for the OCU. How do UOC members explain why society disapproves of their church? Their responses can roughly be divided into the following categories: Links to Russia The majority of my interviewees believe that their church broke all ties to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022. Yet, in their view, society continues to associate them with Russia by inertia. Some of them concede that this is understandable, since for many years in the recent past the church was ‘proudly showing off its unity with Russia’, as one interviewee puts it. Speaking of the period prior to 2022, not only do many interviewees acknowledge the subordination of their church to Moscow, but also condemn a specific atmosphere that then pervaded UOC temples. Described by them as ‘Russian spirit’ or ‘Little-Russianness’, there was a sense that everything Ukrainian was inferior to the Russian ‘original’. This made some interviewees not ‘feel at home’ (pochuvatysia chuzhymy) in their churches and even distrust church leaders. In the words of parishioner An., ‘You felt ashamed not to belong to the Great Empire, but to this local culture instead. […] Sometimes you felt straight away that Orthodox culture meant Russian culture. It was as if we belonged to the church of some national minority.’ A few interviewees believe that the UOC is still linked to Russia. For them, the 2022 Church proclamation of independence was only a first step towards autocephaly. To back up their point, some of them mention how UOC priests still commemorate13 the Moscow Patriarch during the liturgy. And some, like parishioner L., demand clarity about the church’s current status: ‘They [UOC leaders] are saying “We are not the M[oscow] P[atriarchate]”, but who are we then?’ Pro-Russia views For many interviewees, the pro-Russia sentiments of some UOC clergy and parishioners cast a shadow over their church. A. and B. described how a number of their fellow parishioners refuse to take sides in the ongoing war. They supposedly do not approve of statements condemning Russia or supporting Ukraine during religious services. A. recalled how some people left his parish after the priest called Russia an aggressor. In addition, many of those who stayed never kneel during the regular communal prayer for the Ukrainian victory, because they see the prayer as ‘political’. 13 CommemorationisaritualthatanOrthodoxcommunityperformsduringtheliturgy — the priestraisesthechalice,facesthecongregationandpraysfor — orcommemorates — his bishopandhismetropolitanandpatriarch,therebysymbolicallyrestatingtheunionofhisparishwiththeonelegitimateandauthenticchurch. ‘You felt ashamed not to belong to the Great Empire, but to this local culture instead. […] Sometimes you felt straight away that Orthodox culture meant Russian culture.’ Parishioner An. ‘They are saying “We are not the Moscow Patriarchate”, but who are we then?’ Parishioner L. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 16 Reasons (not) to re-affiliate Hardly any of the interviewees has actually re-affiliated. The priests cited their oath of loyalty to the UOC, and even parishioners who recognised the legitimacy of the OCU felt that the UOC was still their church. Others, like parishioner L., pointed out that while they would like to hear liturgy in Ukrainian, the closest OCU church was too far away. Yet for most of the interviewees, the question of which church they are affiliated with is irrelevant. They seem attached to the place, the community of people, the priest and the spiritual fulfilment they get from their current church. As parishioner Sh. aptly summarised: ‘The Parish comes first, then the question of UOC or OCU. […] Having like-minded people around you is more important than the question of whether your church is led by Onufriy [UOC] or Epiphaniy [OCU].’ Only a few interviewees were ready to re-affiliate with the OCU to alleviate the pressure on their parish. Father O. was reluctant to re-affiliate, but said he would do it if it was the only way to save his place of worship and religious community. Others said they would only switch to the other church if the whole parish did so. Father Y. and his parishioners H. and O. re-affiliated shortly after the full-scale invasion in 2022 for moral reasons: They could not remain in a church with people who supported the invasion. Father S. left the UOC a year after the invasion, because he wanted to be involved in humanitarian projects and his UOC affiliation proved problematic in that area of work. Father Ch. talked about a fellow priest who had joined a priest-initiated group promoting dialogue between the UOC and the OCU. But according to Ch., he did it not out of conviction, but because he was afraid of losing his temple to the OCU. For the most part, however, my interviewees were against re-affiliation as a response to external pressure on the UOC. They framed it as a betrayal of their Church and cited many OCU violations as a reason not to join that church whatever the cost. Conclusions This report reveals a breadth of opinion within the UOC that challenges the prevailing perception of it in today’s Ukraine as a thoroughly pro-Russian organisation. While by no means a representative sample, the rank-and-file UOC members I interviewed express a wide range of views on the war, Russia and the question of whether the church needs to change. Most of the interviewees hold the media responsible for negative attitudes towards their church, but some acknowledge that the church itself is partially to blame. Implicit or direct criticism of the UOC leadership is evident in many responses, suggesting that its politics sometimes fails to resonate with ordinary church members. The top-down church propaganda against the OCU is not universally accepted by my interviewees. While most echo UOC narratives about the OCU and see their church as a victim of religious persecution, many question the claims of UOC leaders about the ‘rival’ church. ‘Having like-minded people around you is more important than the question of whether your church is led by Onufriy or Epiphaniy.’ Parishioner Sh. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church  17 The report also shows that the general reluctance to use the Ukrainian language in religious services or re-affiliate with the OCU is not necessarily an indicator of pro-Russian attitudes. Among my interviewees, other factors play a stronger role here, including habit, theological considerations, and a strong sense of connection with their local parish community. A significant number of interviewees are willing to introduce some Ukrainianlanguage elements, but virtually no one is ready to abandon Church Slavonic entirely. Most find the idea of switching to the OCU in order to appease church critics unacceptable. The few who expressed their readiness to do so said they would only switch together with the entire parish. Those UOC clerics who reaffiliated in 2022 did so on moral grounds. The report cites later cases where priests re-affiliated to the OCU for more pragmatic reasons: in order to retain their temples or remain active in humanitarian projects. Confronted with war, public disapproval of the UOC, and internal church problems, many UOC members attempt to disengage themselves from complex discussions that they perceive as irrelevant to their daily lives as parishioners or clerics. The concept of politics looms prominently in all my interviews; everyone mentioned it in one way or another. For some, politics denoted everything that had nothing to do with God — i. e. debates about church structure, the veneration of saints, autocephaly, re-affiliation and so on. Others claimed that what the OCU and ROC were doing was politics, namely representing the church as an integral part of national identity, ideology and traditions. Thus politics in the mouths of my respondents always meant something bad or irrelevant. For them, the church should be beyond politics (buty poza politykoiu) and exorcise all politics-related things from its daily practices. Yet, the war politicises everything, so the conflict between religious communities striving to be apolitical and an increasingly politicised society is likely to continue. Imprint Author Andriy Fert Published by © Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) gGmbH Address Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) gGmbH Mohrenstraße 60 10117 Berlin [email protected] www.zois-berlin.de Citation Fert, Andriy: ‘War and Religion — Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church’, ZOiS Report 6 / 2024, (https:// en.zois-berlin.de/fileadmin/media/Dateien/3-Publikationen/ZOiS_Reports/2024/ZOiS_ Report_6_2024.pdf) ISSN 2627-7233 Editing Anne Boden Layout Yuko Stier Cover image The All Saints Church in Kyiv Pechersk Lavra © George Chernilevsky This report is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ZOiS Report 6 / 2024 War and Religion ― Views from within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church 18