Putin Suffers Crimea Blowback with Orthodox Church schism

Financial Times ^ | Oct 14, 2018 | Max Seddon, Roman Olearchyk

[CondoleezzaProtege]

When Russian president Vladimir Putin celebrated the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he claimed the disputed peninsula was “spiritually” inseparable from Moscow.

But Mr Putin’s military intervention is now threatening to undermine the “Russian world” beyond Moscow’s borders that he sought to protect.

An arcane canonical dispute has become a geopolitical flashpoint after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of Orthodox Christianity, said on Thursday that he intended to grant full recognition to a breakaway church in Ukraine that split from the Russian patriarchate in the early 1990s.

The Russian church has warned it may refuse to recognise Bartholomew’s authority, creating the greatest schism in Orthodoxy in almost a thousand years.

Losing Ukraine is a serious blow not only for the Russian Orthodox Church — which has about a third of its parishes there — but for the Kremlin itself after years of attempts to retain influence over Ukraine backfired.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, told reporters that Russia was “deeply concerned” by the move and would make good on Mr Putin’s promises to “protect the interests of Orthodox believers” in the case of attacks on the Moscow patriarchate in Ukraine.

Though Mr Peskov said Russia would use “exclusively political and diplomatic means” to do so, many in Ukraine fear a violent response. Mr Putin held a security council meeting late on Friday to discuss the issue.

If it breaks with Constantinople, Russia could lose access to Mount Athos in Greece, a holy site that Mr Putin and other senior Kremlin figures have visited regularly.

Some other Orthodox churches have sided with Bartholomew, who has aggressively expanded his own influence from his enclave in Istanbul by recognising more Orthodox churches overseas.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Andrei Desnitsky, a Russian religious scholar, said the clash was a symptom of Russia’s broader loss of influence globally since the invasion of Crimea.

“Russia is drifting away from the global community towards voluntary isolationism,” he wrote. “Now we’re risking having the same thing in church life: the only real Orthodox believers are us and the people who agree with us, everyone else is a heretic and a traitor, God is with us and us only.”

[lightman]

Orthodox Ping!

O heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth
who are in all places and fillest all things:
Treasury of good things and Giver of life:
Come and dwell in us and cleanse us from every stain,
and save our souls, O good One.

[pepsi_junkie]

If it breaks with Constantinople, Russia could lose access to Mount Athos in Greece, a holy site that Mr Putin and other senior Kremlin figures have visited regularly.

Why wouldn't they still be able to visit the site? Is it exclusive to the sect that presides over it? That's a bit unusual

[LimitedPowers]

Some other Orthodox churches have sided with Bartholomew....

Which churches are these? I know that, for example, Antioch has strongly condemned the Ecumenical Patriarch's decision.