Senator proposes sanctions on Russian patriarch amid war in Ukraine

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill It is not an “authentic theologian,” A senior Republican senator encouraged trans-Atlantic allies, according to one, to approve the cleric for blessing Russia‘s war in Ukraine.

“The patriarch has urged Russians to side with the persecutor over the persecuted,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member, said in a message sent to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “No authentic theologian would endorse such flagrant violations of human rights. In fact, it is appropriate for the United States and European partners to consider whether Kirill himself should face sanctions.”

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CROURT PREPARING INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIA FOR WAR CRIMES

British officials imposed sanctions against Kirill in July, but a parallel effort within the European Union failed after Hungary objected. Wicker’s broadside was incorporated into an extended condemnation by Russian President Vladimir Putin of his abuse of religious minorities and occupied Ukrainian territory. This hearing straddled the fault line between Ukraine’s Orthodox citizens, and a Kremlin which uses historical religious affiliations to geopolitical levers.

“President Putin has leveraged the religious nationalism of the Russian people for his own cause. He has framed the war in religious terms, and set his own people against Ukraine,” Wicker spoke out, naming Kirill among Putin’s. “most prominent propagandists.”

During the conflict in Ukraine, the issue of Orthodox churches being under Ukrainian jurisdiction has been a hot topic. Putin has invoked the shared religious heritage of Russian and Ukrainian people to justify his hegemony in Ukraine, but the Istanbul-based Patriarch Bartholomew of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — the senior patriarch in the Global Orthodox Communion — approved the formation of an autonomous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, five years into the war.

These two churches operated in parallel. But Russia’s recent campaign to overthrow Ukrainian government has caused hundreds of Orthodox congregations to severe ties with Moscow Patriarchate. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, also attempted to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow Patriarchate (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra), an ancient monastery located on government property. Transfer It is now under the control of the Kyiv Orthodox Church body.

The right to religious freedom Hearing The abuse of religious minorities by Moscow in Russia and Ukraine was brought to the forefront. One expert supported sanctions. “the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and Moscow Patriarch Kirill personally” They are complicit in religious freedom violations. Zelensky was warned by the same witness not to ban the whole church.

“On the one hand, religious freedom is not in any way an excuse for calls to violate state sovereignty or territorial integrity, or for collaboration with Russian military forces,” Dmytro Voivk, a Ukrainian law student and adviser to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said: “On the other hand, international human rights standards emphasize that while counteracting national security threats, the government should focus on concrete individuals involved in illegal activities, not on the whole religious group or religion in general.”

Vovk said that it was still a good idea. “the biggest challenge to religious freedom in Ukraine” Russia seized territories.

“These restrictions and repressions have been accompanied by numerous acts of pure violence committed by the Russian military and paramilitary groups,” Vovk stated. “[S]ince February 2022, the Russian military destroyed and damaged about 500 religious buildings. A bitter irony is that almost a third of these buildings belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, historically and ecclesiastical affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate.”

Vovk and other witnesses described the latest wartime predations in the context of religious freedom violations occurring in occupied Crimea. Russian officials use counterterrorism law to attack members of religious groups that refuse to obey. “to prosecute activists and believers outside the religious organizations recognized by the Russian authorities,” An anonymous activist from Crimea’s Tatar Muslim community stated this in a statement to the commission. As one former prisoner of conscience testified, these tactics were used against Jehovah’s Witnesses from Russia.

“Sometimes, the police came unannounced to our meetings and filmed all those who attended. I could not really understand, at that time, why they were doing all this. … But it soon became clear to me,” Dennis Christensen is a Jehovah’s Witness and citizen of Denmark. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2019, after having served two years pre-trial detention.

Christensen spoke out about how he was targeted despite the fact that both a judge & prosecutor had agreed to release him from prison on parole.

“But I wasn’t released. The administration sent me the day after to punishment cells,” He remembered. “And there, I found out that the prosecutor had appealed his own decision and demanded a new trial. At that time, I could understand that the orders came from high above, from Moscow, and that they were not playing fair play. And I was not going home before time.”

This is a sign of an attempted extortion. “to annihilate civil society,” According to another expert in human rights.

“The authorities are deeply suspicious of institutions, be they nongovernment organizations, political parties, or religious confessions, that they do not control,” During the hearing Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Director, said. “If the government cannot control a religious community, the impulse is to deem it a threat to ‘Russian traditional values.'”

Patriarch Kirill has said that Russian soldiers who die fighting in Ukraine will have their sins forgiven by God — “this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed,” He has of death in battle — as he maintains that the war is a defense of a “Russian world” It transcends national borders.

“Today, Donbas is the front line of defense of the Russian world,” In December, Patriarch Kirill stated. “And the Russian world is not only Russia — it is everywhere where people who were brought up in the traditions of Orthodoxy and in the traditions of Russian morality live.”

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This position has exacerbated the conflict between the Moscow and EcumenicalPatriarchates.

“What is still more painful to us is the fact that the Patriarchate of Moscow has stooped to the level of submitting to political ambitions of the Russian Federation, even endorsing and seemingly blessing this cruel invasion and unjustifiable bloodshed,” Patriarch Bartholomew . “We hope that someday the Moscow Patriarchate will also recognize that unity is not enforced by domination, but only embraced in freedom.”