Is the largest church in Ukraine still pro-Russian? | News about the Russian-Ukrainian war

Khust, Ukraine – “Praise Jesus” instead of “hello” is what is often heard in Transcarpathia, Ukraine's westernmost region.

Known for piety, mesmerizing folklore, forested mountains and resourceful smugglers, Transcarpathia was dominated by the Greek Catholic Church, which retained Orthodox rites but regarded the Pope as its spiritual leader.

Transcarpathia was never part of Russia until Soviet leader Joseph Stalin annexed it in 1944, imposing the Russian Orthodox Church, whose top clergy cooperated with the KGB, the main Soviet-era security service.

“Soviet intelligence either forced all the (Greek Catholic) priests to accept pro-communist Orthodoxy or slaughtered them in Siberia,” Oleh Dyba, a publicist and researcher of religious life in Transcarpathia, told Al Jazeera.

This is the second year that Ukraine celebrates Christmas on December 25 after hundreds of years of celebrating it on January 7 in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, which is still used by the Russian Orthodox Church.

But despite this, the former pro-Russian Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) remains the largest religious church in the country.

Moscow Patriarch Kirillwho headed the largest Orthodox cathedral in the world, was one of those who collaborated with the KGB. He remains the closest ideological ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel.

Cyril has been accused of purging dissident priests, he has described Moscow's invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war” and he said that the Russian servicemen who died in Ukraine have “washed away” their sins.

“Russia is effectively returning to the discourse of the medieval crusades,” Andrei Kordochkin, an Oxford-educated theologian who left Cyril's church to join the Istanbul-based Patriarchate of Constantinople, told Al Jazeera.

More than a millennium ago, Constantinople sent Orthodox priests to baptize Prince Vladimir of Kiev, a pagan Viking whose state would give birth to what is now Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

The UOC was a significant and essential part of the religious empire of Moscow with thousands of parishes and priests.

Some of them held pro-Russian views after Moscow annexed Crimea and backed separatists in the southeastern Donbass region in 2014.

“Their priest refused to pray for my cousin who was fighting in Donbas in 2015,” Philip, a resident of the Transcarpathian village of Chinadievo, told Al Jazeera. “I have never set foot in that church since.”

Meanwhile, the separatists turned against the pro-Ukrainian clergy.

One of those attacked was Archbishop Athanasius, who faced a mock execution in June 2014. in the “capital” of the rebels Luhansk.

He was blindfolded, placed against a wall, and heard a shot that missed him.

He left Luhansk in his dilapidated car, the brakes of which were deliberately damaged by the rebels, Athanasius told this reporter in 2018.

UOC vs. OCU

In 2019 Ukraine's pro-Western government created the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which reports to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

However, despite the arrangements, coercion and persecution of clergy, the former pro-Russian UOC remains the largest religious cathedral in Ukraine.

It formally seceded from Moscow and aided the war effort by taking in refugees and collecting humanitarian aid and donations for drones and medical supplies.

But many of its leaders have come under fire for their real or perceived pro-Moscow sympathies.

Metropolitan Mark, a white-bearded 73-year-old man whose religious sphere is centered around the small Transcarpathian town of Khust, is one of them.

In the past two years, he has been accused of holding a Russian passport — along with two dozen senior UOC clerics — and of building a $225,000 house in Sergiev Posad, a spiritual center outside Moscow where he studied in the 1970s.

Mark's nephew, driver and deacon Volodymyr Petrovtsi, faces desertion charges after he defected from his military unit in October and reportedly said he did not want to fight “his fellow Russians”.

One of Metropolitan Mark's clerics told Al Jazeera that the claims about the house and the passport were false.

“I can tell you with all my heart that this is not true,” said Father Basil, standing in the Khust cathedral, whose walls and ceiling were filled with images of Gospel scenes and icons.

However, he claims that as early as 2018 the popular comedian Volodymyr Zelensky sought the support of the UOC before the presidential vote.

Father Vasily said, without providing any evidence of this exchange, that Zelensky secured his support after promising to convert to Christianity – but never kept his alleged “promise”.

“Since then, he has been punishing and persecuting us,” asserts Father Basil.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify Basil's claims.

From 2022 more than 100 UOC priests are suspected of treason, cooperation with Moscow-appointed officials in occupied regions and spreading Russian propaganda, the Security Service of Ukraine, the main intelligence agency, said in August.

Then the Verkhovna Rada, the lower house of Ukraine's parliament, banned the UOC for “strengthening national security and protecting the constitutional order.”

“It's quite risky to experiment with compatriots”

But the move is extremely counterproductive, according to a German researcher who has spent decades studying religious life in Ukraine and visited dozens of parishes.

Far-right groups are pressuring the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into submission by force, taking over parishes and neglecting their parishioners who are fighting on the front lines, said Nikolay Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen.

“When Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, it is quite risky to experiment with its compatriots in this way,” he told Al Jazeera.

The pressure violates Ukraine's constitution and draws criticism from the collective West, jeopardizing the delivery of military and financial aid, he said, adding that the pressure gives the Kremlin a perfect excuse for the rabid “Kiev neo-Nazi junta” to spread anti-Ukraine messages and appropriate parishes in the occupied Russia Ukrainian regions.

On December 16, popular chef Evgeny Klopotenko filmed a cooking show about traditional Christmas dishes in the canteen of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a huge religious complex in the center of Kyiv.

Most of the ancient complex belongs to the UOC.

The Kremlin reacted to the news with predictable derision – and shared it with pro-Russian audiences in the former Soviet Union.

“They take over the churches to turn them into circuses,” Nilufar Abdulaeva, a self-described “Russian patriot” living in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, told Al Jazeera. “They lost all shame.”

The official ban of the UOC will only drive it into illegality, and it “sooner or later will come out of there with the image of a martyr and a winner,” Mitrokhin said.

Finally, closing parishes could damage and destroy thousands of historic buildings that need constant attention, repair and heating during the harsh Ukrainian winters.

“After a while, the catastrophic destruction of murals and then buildings began,” Mitrokhin said. “Therefore, a huge part of Ukraine's own cultural heritage will disappear.”