This is not just political – it is a religious crusade
As the Orthodox Easter is celebrated, keeping the faith has never been more important for Ukrainians
‘There were lots of spies, looking at who is praying, who is a priest. Our village remembers those strict times’
‘They are connected to each other by the war and want peace. They are ready to make this change, not to be connected to Moscow’
Father Mykhailo Syvak, a 35-year-old priest at the Cathedral of the Holy Intercession in Lviv, tells me that his parishioners are willing to die “for our freedom and our independence”.
He does not just mean the freedom of their state.
Fr Syvak supports the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which in 2018 declared its independence from the Russian Orthodox leadership of Patriarch Kirill in Moscow. Since the beginning of the war, dozens of parishes in Lviv have officially joined the UOC; nationwide, it is estimated that around half of all Orthodox parishes are looking to make a similar break.
But some Ukrainian priests remain loyal to Mr Kirill and are accused of preaching against resistance to the invasion, even of giving away the movements of Ukrainian troops.
The Moscow Patriarch yesterday spoke of the need for reconciliation but refused to condemn a military campaign that is killing thousands of his own flock. He only “wants to do what the president of Russia wants to do,” believes Fr Syvak, which is to “fully destroy” the UOC.
This is not just a political war, it is a religious one, too. And it taps into painful historical memory.
This weekend is the Orthodox Easter. Children wear colourful folk costumes, priests bless bread. Around 70 per cent of the country is Orthodox; the second-largest group is Catholic (about nine per cent), who generally observe Orthodox-style rites.
At the Good Friday service at the Church of the Most Holy Apostles, Catholic worshippers crawl towards an icon of Jesus on their knees; they kiss it and back away, crossing themselves.
The queue for this athletic exercise stretches out into the rainy street.
Church attendance across Lviv has leapt in recent weeks, confessions are popular. Victoria, a local resident, is here on her own because her mother has fled to Germany, taking her younger brother, and her father is serving in the army. She has stayed behind to care for two elderly grandmothers and their dogs.
For her, Easter is “an opportunity to pray for soldiers and their relatives” – and to “honour traditions” that are suddenly under attack.
Ukrainians have only been able to practise religion freely since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The threat Vladimir Putin now poses to that liberty reminds many of the worst days of Stalin.
The Soviets first tried to suppress religion. Then, when the Second World War broke out, Josef Stalin not only tolerated the Russian Orthodox Church, he compelled Catholics to join it, seizing their property. Fr Syvak’s church, for example, had been Catholic until the 1940s before it was forcibly donated to the Orthodox.
Then, in 1961, the Cathedral of the Holy Intercession itself fell victim to a national anti-religion campaign. It was turned into a book depository.
For 60 years, says Fr Andrew Shestak, a priest who teaches at the Ukrainian Catholic University – when lessons aren’t being interrupted by air-raid sirens – Ukraine had a “catacomb church”, operating underground.
Then, in the 1990s, Catholic and Orthodox churches were allowed to reopen and enjoyed a flood of worshippers and foreign money for restoration. The country went from “communist and ideological to suddenly free”, yet the governing class was still “the same people” – many of them affiliated to Moscow – so there was “resistance” to free-thinking and religious pluralism. The new nation was officially secular; its current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. But the Orthodox Church flexed its muscles and was reluctant to hand back stolen property.
When Crimea was annexed to Russia in 2014, Catholics had a demonstration of how much worse a Putin-dominated Ukraine might be.
“We have parishes in occupied territory,” Fr Shestak says, including Crimea, and the only reason why their priests weren’t exiled was because “they had become a big authority in the past” and were popular. Instead, they were compelled to “rename their churches and register them… as some kind of Orthodox Church”. It was a clear replay of the Stalinist era.
But if Putin wishes to reunite “ancient Rus” around a strengthened Orthodox communion, the way he’s gone about doing it has backfired horribly. In the past weeks, hundreds of Ukrainian priests have demanded that Mr Kirill be tried by a church council for giving his blessing to the war. There are calls to expel the Moscow-led Church from the World Council of Churches.
Taras Kurylko, a 21-year old student from the village of Khvativ, explains that under the communists, the Orthodox in his community had kept the faith, yet they also developed a strong aversion to Moscow politics. “We remember our history, that there wasn’t any way to go to the liturgy in the open under the Soviets. Children were baptised in secret. There were lots of spies, looking at who is praying, who is a priest. Our village remembers those strict times.”
So, when Ukraine gained its independence, many Orthodox believers wanted to replicate that blow for freedom in religious terms, too – hence the establishment in 2018 of an autonomous church affiliated to Constantinople rather than Moscow, a schism that has been condemned by both Mr Kirill and Putin who, in time-honoured fashion, has accused it of being proto-fascist.
Mr Zelensky has supported the UOC. Tiny at first, it has enjoyed a spark in growth thanks to the invasion – and the war has compelled Orthodox priests to test their consciences.
Fr Shestak explains: “On the first day of the war, a lot of parishes recorded videos asking for the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to break its communion [with Moscow]... Churches in Ukraine [initially] decided not to pray for Kirill and the Moscow hierarchy in their services” to signal their discomfort.
Those prayers are trickling back, particularly in the Carpathians and the east of Ukraine; some priests are preaching Mr Kirill’s line that this is a civil war, not an invasion, and that therefore both sides should lay down their arms.
Ultimately, says Fr Shestak, most believers will eventually choose independence. “Sixty days of war has totally changed the mentality” of the average citizen, religious or otherwise. They are no longer arguing about what language should be spoken – Ukrainian or Russian – “they are connected to each other by the war and want peace. They are ready to make this change, not to be connected to Moscow.”
Fr Syvak agrees. Standing in a church transfigured by candlelight, the air thick with incense, he quietly predicts that more and more parishes will join the autonomous church. Even if Putin were successful, even if the whole country fell, which everyone insists is impossible, “Most of my parishioners have a clear understanding of what to do. We will decide to stay free even if it costs us our life.”