OSW Commentary - A holy war. The Russian Orthodox Church blesses the war against the West

The Russian Orthodox Church blesses the war against the West Katarzyna Chawryło Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) have supported the war and justified Russia’s aggressive policy since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. [...] The religious foundations of the expansionist state ideology The views expressed in the decree reflect the stance of the entire Russian Orthodox Church. [...] However, the content of the de- cree goes beyond the previous framework of the church’s cooperation with the government, which 1 Both the church and the Kremlin assume that the primary target of their influence are the Eastern Slavs: Russians, Ukrai- nians and Belarusians, as well as all Russian-speaking and Orthodox communities. [...] The goals of the church’s claims In domestic politics, the decree and the church’s position expressed therein are intended to increase the engagement of the Russian public and elites in the war, which the regime will be able to directly exploit in its military campaign in Ukraine. [...] The content of the Decree of the 25th World Russian People’s Council: the present and the future of the Russian world, in which the West was unequivocally named as the main enemy and branded as satanic, reveals the actual worldview of the ROC representing, like the Kremlin, a zero-sum approach, which is focused on confrontation and aggressive expansion rather than cooperation for the sake of peace.