What Did Patriarch Kirill Bless?

The preceding chapters established the teaching and documented the contradiction. This chapter shows what this “holy war” looks like.

Before you read further, know this: some will call what follows “Western propaganda,” “anti-Russian,” or “Russophobic.” This is the same language the Russian state uses to justify imprisoning people who report these events.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian Orthodox Christian who spent over 300 days in solitary confinement for opposing this war, made the necessary distinction at an Atlantic Council panel:

Not all Russians support this war in Ukraine. Not all clergymen in the Moscow Patriarchate support this war… When we are talking about the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, we are of course talking about the position of the official hierarchy. We’re not talking about faith. We’re not talking about the collective body of the church, which includes tens of millions of faithful, of believers, many of whom are totally against this war just as we are.^[1]

This chapter documents what the official hierarchy blessed. The faithful who oppose it are not its target.

Over 1,250 Russian citizens have been criminally prosecuted for saying publicly what this chapter documents. If the evidence were fabricated, Russia would not need to criminalize reporting it.

Every image below was documented by Ukrainian police, emergency services, or international organizations. The satellite images were taken by commercial providers whose data is accepted as evidence by the International Criminal Court. The footnotes in this chapter are more extensive than any other in this book, because these claims will be the most contested.

If you intend to dismiss what follows, we ask only this: read the sources first. Look at the photographs. Look at the names. These are baptized Orthodox Christians, killed by other baptized Orthodox Christians, under a blessing given by their own Patriarch. You are Christ’s rational flock. He gave you a conscience. Use it.

This is what Patriarch Kirill blessed.

Эта жертва смывает все грехи, которые человек совершил.

This sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed.

— Patriarch Kirill, Sermon, September 25, 2022, http://www.patriarchia.ru/article/103723

For Children

On April 8, 2022, a Russian Tochka-U ballistic missile struck Kramatorsk railway station while thousands of civilians waited to evacuate. At least sixty people were killed, including children.^[2] Written on the side of the missile, in Russian, were two words: ЗА ДЕТЕЙ. “For children.”

On March 16, 2022, Russian forces bombed the Mariupol Drama Theater where over a thousand civilians had taken shelter. The word “ДЕТИ” (Children) had been painted in enormous letters on the ground on both sides of the building, clearly visible from the air. An estimated 600 people were killed.^[3]

Amnesty International independently investigated the attack and identified twelve of the dead by name.

Maria Ponomarenko, a Russian journalist, was sentenced to six years in a penal colony and a five-year ban on journalism for a Telegram post about it. In prison, she was injected with haloperidol (a Soviet-era punitive psychiatry drug), placed in solitary confinement at least four times despite her claustrophobia (twice for being too ill to stand when ordered), and went on hunger strike. She attempted suicide.^[4]

In Russia, telling the truth about what these photographs show is a criminal offense.

On July 14, 2022, Russian cruise missiles struck the center of Vinnytsia, a city 200 miles from the front line. Twenty-seven people were killed, including 4-year-old Liza Dmytrieva, a child with Down syndrome who was walking with her mother to a speech therapy session.^[5]

On March 9, 2022, Russian forces bombed the Mariupol maternity hospital while pregnant women and newborns were inside.^[6] On November 23, 2022, a Russian missile struck the maternity ward of Vilniansk hospital in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, killing a two-day-old baby.^[7]

On July 8, 2024, a Russian missile struck the Okhmatdyt National Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine’s largest children’s medical facility. Children undergoing cancer treatment were pulled from the rubble.^[8]

The war did not only kill children. It took them.

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children.^[9] Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified over 8,400 children transported to 57 facilities across Russia and Belarus, ages four months to seventeen years. Russia’s own commissioner stated in July 2023 that approximately 700,000 Ukrainian minors had been “transferred.” As of February 2026, approximately 2,000 have been returned: roughly 10% of documented cases.^[10]

On state television, Lvova-Belova described adopting a 15-year-old boy from occupied Mariupol. She told Putin: “Now I know what it means to be a mother of a child from Donbas.” The boy, she said, “did not want to go to Russia,” was “annoyed by Moscow and Russia,” “sang Ukrainian songs all the time,” and said “I don’t want to live in Russia. I love Ukraine.” She attributed his resistance to “eight years of propaganda in the territory of Mariupol.” This was broadcast as a heartwarming story and confession.^[11]

Georgetown University documented that the Moscow Patriarchate was not merely a bystander to the deportations. Fifty-eight church institutions served as accommodation centers for deported children. The Patriarchate established a dedicated fundraising website, and all fundraising required approval from Patriarch Kirill. Staff were instructed to classify deportees as “refugees from Donbas” rather than “deported.”^[12]

The ICC indicted Putin for deporting children. Georgetown documented that Kirill’s institution processed the logistics.

The Massacres

Не останется никаких следов от раскольников, потому что они выполняют злую волю дьявола, разрушая Православие на Киевской земле.

There will be no trace left of the schismatics, because they are fulfilling the devil’s evil bidding, destroying Orthodoxy on Kyivan land.

— Patriarch Kirill, Christmas Sermon, January 8, 2023, Dormition Cathedral, Moscow Kremlin, https://www.patriarchia.ru/article/104111

In Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, Russian forces left behind the bodies of more than 450 civilians after withdrawing in late March 2022. Many had been executed with their hands bound. Bodies were found in basements with signs of torture. Satellite imagery showed civilians shot while riding bicycles, their bodies left in the road for weeks. German intelligence intercepted Russian soldiers discussing the killings.^[13]

In Irpin, civilians fleeing across a bombed bridge were killed while carrying their belongings.^[14]

In Izium, after Russian withdrawal in September 2022, investigators discovered mass graves containing over 440 bodies, many showing signs of torture.^[15]

On March 3, 2022, Russian aircraft bombed a residential area in central Chernihiv, killing 47 civilians. The majority of the victims were queuing for food.^[16]

On October 5, 2023, a Russian Iskander missile struck a funeral wake in the village of Hroza, Kharkiv Oblast. Fifty-nine people were killed. The village had a population of 330; nearly one in five residents were killed in a single strike. The mourners had gathered to bury a fallen soldier.^[17]

On September 30, 2022, a Russian missile struck a civilian convoy near Zaporizhzhia. Thirty people were killed, including children, in a column of vehicles waiting at a checkpoint.^[18]

Kirill promised no trace would be left of the “schismatics.” These are the traces his war left of the baptized.

The Homes

Идёт Священная война.

A Holy War is underway.

— World Russian People’s Council (chaired by Patriarch Kirill), Declaration, March 27, 2024, https://www.patriarchia.ru/article/105523

On January 14, 2023, a Russian Kh-22 missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro, collapsing an entire section of the nine-story building. Forty-six people were killed, including six children.^[19]

On April 28, 2023, a Russian cruise missile launched from an aircraft over the Caspian Sea struck an apartment building in Uman at 4 AM. Twenty-three people were killed, including six children. Uman is 200 miles from the front line.^[20]

On June 27, 2022, a Russian missile struck the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk while over a thousand people were inside. At least 22 were killed.^[21]

On March 29, 2022, a Russian Kalibr missile destroyed the Mykolaiv Regional Administration building, collapsing the structure from the first to the ninth floor. Thirty-seven people were killed.^[22]

In Borodianka, Russian air strikes gutted residential apartment buildings, leaving entire blocks burned and hollowed out.^[23]

On August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Russian missiles struck Chaplyne railway station, destroying a passenger train and surrounding buildings. At least 25 were killed.^[24]

The World Russian People’s Council called this a “Holy War.” These are the homes its so-called “Holy War” destroyed.

The Churches Kirill Destroyed

Вспоминая, что слово Божие говорит применительно к пришествию в мир антихриста, мы можем сказать, что сегодня Россия — это удерживающий. А это означает, что все силы антихриста будут брошены на наша страну.

Recalling what the Word of God says concerning the coming of the Antichrist into the world, we can say that today Russia is the Restrainer. And this means that all the forces of the Antichrist will be thrown against our country.

— Patriarch Kirill, Address at Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, November 20, 2022, https://www.patriarchia.ru/article/79283

The Russian military has damaged or destroyed over 700 religious sites in Ukraine.^[25] The Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, Kirill’s own canonical jurisdiction, suffered the most.^[26] By the end of 2023, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) Holy Synod itself reported 119 churches and prayer rooms destroyed, 329 damaged, and 30 monasteries destroyed or significantly damaged.^[27]

After a Russian missile destroyed the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Metropolitan Agafangel, a historically pro-Russian bishop, publicly declared: “The so-called ‘SMO’ is a real genocide of the Ukrainian people.”^[28] His words were read at the United Nations Security Council.

Kirill blessed the war. The war destroyed his own churches. His own bishops called it genocide. Thus, the “Restrainer” protecting Orthodoxy from the Antichrist has destroyed more Orthodox churches than any force since the Soviet atheists.

On occupied territories, Russia suppresses all religious activity that does not submit to the Moscow Patriarchate. Clergy who refuse to align with Moscow are detained, exiled, or banned from holding services. Some will dismiss this, arguing that those affected are schismatics who deserve no protection. But the Orthodox tradition itself condemns state coercion in matters of faith, even against heretics.

St. Theodore the Studite established the principle when Emperor Michael I began persecuting the Paulician heretics in the ninth century. St. Theodore did not defend the Paulicians’ theology; he condemned the persecution itself:

The Church is not accustomed to vindicate herself by means of whippings, exiles and imprisonments. Ecclesiastical law does not bring knife, sword and whips against anyone; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.

— St. Theodore the Studite, Epistle 94, Fatouros I.23; Hieromonk Patapios, “St. Theodore the Studite and the Problem of the Paulicians,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43:1-4 (1998)

St. Theodore drew a jurisdictional line: temporal rulers may punish bodily crimes, but they have no authority over spiritual matters. That belongs exclusively to those who govern souls:

Although it is permitted for those who rule over bodies to punish those caught in bodily wrongdoing, it is not permitted for them to punish those who transgress in spiritual matters. This belongs to those who rule over souls, whose means of correction are excommunications and other penalties.

— St. Theodore the Studite, Epistle 455 (to Bishop Theophilos of Ephesus), PG 99:1484

The saint went further still: “What do we say about not allowing heretics to be killed? It is not given to us even to pray against them.” Citing St. Dionysios the Areopagite, St. Theodore taught that “those in ignorance must be taught, not punished, just as we do not punish the blind but lead them by the hand” (Epistle 8 to Demophilos, PG 3:1096C).^[29] And citing St. Ignatios of Antioch: “Those who hate God we must hate and waste away against His enemies, but we must not persecute or use violence, as do the nations who do not know God” (To the Philadelphians 3, PG 5:821B).^[30] If we must not even use violence against them, St. Theodore concluded, still less may we kill them.

St. Theodore made an explicit distinction that bears directly on Russia’s conduct: the state has every right to make war against foreign enemies who are slaying the people of God; but heretics who are subjects of the empire are a different matter entirely. Against them, the Church’s tools are excommunication and teaching, not soldiers and prisons. He told the emperor to his face: “Sooner will my head be removed than I would consent to this.”

St. Athanasius the Great, himself exiled five times by Arian emperors, identified state coercion in religious matters as the hallmark of heresy itself: “For it is the part of true godliness not to compel, but to persuade” (History of the Arians 67).

The “Restrainer” does not protect religious freedom; it eliminates it. And in doing so, it acts not as the saints acted, but as the heretical emperors acted: compelling by force what can only be received by faith.

Yet betrayal from within the clergy is nothing new. St. Basil counseled the faithful of his own day:

If traitors have arisen from among the very clergy themselves, let not this undermine your confidence in God. We are saved not by names, but by mind and purpose, and genuine love toward our Creator. If but one be saved, like Lot at Sodom, he ought to abide in right judgment, keeping his hope in Christ unshaken, for the Lord will not forsake His holy ones.

— St. Basil the Great, Letter 257^[31]

Every priest appointed to warn his flock will answer for what he chose to bless or to condemn:

Because he who has been appointed to rectify the ignorance of others, and to warn them beforehand of the conflict with the devil which is coming upon them, will not be able to put forward ignorance as his excuse. For he is set for that very purpose, says Ezekiel, that he may sound the trumpet for others, and warn them of the dangers at hand. And therefore his chastisement is inevitable, though he that perishes happen to be but one.

— St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Book VI^[32]

The Priests

Patriarch Kirill called this a “Sacred War.” This is what the sacred war did to its own clergy.

The war killed, tortured, and imprisoned the priests of Kirill’s own Ukrainian churches. Russian forces shot them at checkpoints, tortured them in detention, and sentenced those who refused to surrender their parishes to years in labor camps.

Fr. Mykola Palahniuk, 72, was killed by Russian shelling at the St. John the Forerunner Church in Bilozerka, Kherson Oblast, on June 13, 2023. He was distributing humanitarian aid to flood victims after Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam.

Archpriest Vasyl Kiyko, 62, was killed by Russian shelling in Hryshyne, Donetsk Oblast, on December 29, 2025. He had served the same parish for 28 years and refused to leave as the village’s population fell from 2,000 to 200.

Fr. Ihor Novosilsky was held for 262 days in Russian captivity after helping twelve Ukrainian soldiers escape across the Dnipro. He was subjected to electric shocks, beatings, and sleep deprivation.

Fr. Kostiantyn Maksimov, a priest of the UOC (Moscow Patriarchate), was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian labor camp. His crime: refusing to transfer his parish to new Russian Orthodox Church dioceses established on occupied territory. The charge was “espionage.”

Archimandrite Feognost (Pushkov), a UOC priest of the Luhansk Diocese, was the first Moscow Patriarchate priest in the region to bless Ukrainian Armed Forces positions in 2014. After the full-scale invasion, he publicly condemned the “Russian World” doctrine. In June 2024, the FSB arrested him on a pretext charge; the real motive was his anti-war YouTube sermons. He described his 107 days of imprisonment as “107 days of hell.” He remains on Russian-occupied territory, banned from priestly ministry.^[33]

In Russia itself, even quoting Scripture became a crime. In early March 2022, a Russian Orthodox priest in the Kostroma region was arrested after his Sunday sermon. His offense: reminding his congregation of the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” He was charged with “discrediting the armed services of the Russian Federation.”^[34]

Patriarch Kirill blessed the war. A priest who quoted “Thou shalt not kill” was arrested for discrediting the forces that wage it. This is the “Sacred War.” Approximately 2,000 priests travel to the war zone on a regular basis, supporting Russian military operations.^[35] Sergei Chapnin, who spent fifteen years inside the Moscow Patriarchate before being dismissed for his critical stance, described the institutional reality: parishes collect money for the Russian military, and “the official church is totally involved in this war machine.”^[36]

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian journalist sentenced to twenty-five years for exposing the truth about this war, said the following in his last statement before the court:

The day will come when the darkness over our country will evaporate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when it will be officially recognised that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who fostered and unleashed this war will be recognised as criminals, rather than those who tried to stop it.

Not only do I not repent of any of this, I am proud of it.

— Vladimir Kara-Murza, Last Statement to Moscow City Court, April 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/10/vladimir-kara-murza-final-statement-court/

What he does not repent of is telling the truth. And what did he receive for telling that truth? Twenty-five years in prison.

Not to oppose error, is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them.

— Pope St. Felix III (†492)

The institutional enforcement that produced these results, including the mandatory victory prayer and the defrocking of peace clergy, is documented in Chapter 21.

What the Sacred War Requires

Patriarch Kirill called this a “Sacred War.” Sacred wars cannot survive scrutiny.

Everything documented in this chapter exists because someone risked prison to record it. The state that wages the war Kirill blessed imprisons anyone who documents what that blessing produces. What follows are the people who told the truth. What we do not know, what was never documented because the documenter was silenced first, is unknowable. This is only what got through.

On March 4, 2022, eight days into the full-scale invasion, Russia’s parliament enacted Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, criminalizing any public statement about the military that contradicts the official line. The penalty: up to fifteen years in prison.^[37]

Aleksei Gorinov, a Moscow municipal councillor (a Russian), became the first person in Russia sentenced under the new law. At a council meeting discussing a children’s drawing contest for Children’s Day, he said: “How can we talk about a Children’s Day drawing contest? Now children are dying every day.”

He received seven years for this.

In prison, a military court added three more years based on secretly recorded conversations. He has tuberculosis; his medications have been confiscated. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but remains in a maximum-security penal colony.^[38]

Sergei Mikhailov, founder of the independent newspaper LIStok in Gorno-Altaisk, Siberia, received eight years for publishing about the Bucha massacre and the bombing of Mariupol. In his closing statement he said: “My articles were intended to counter this confusion, preventing my audience from being misled by falsehoods, steering them away from participation in armed conflicts.” His appeal was denied in July 2025. He remains imprisoned.^[39]

Roman Ivanov, a journalist for RusNews, received seven years for Telegram posts about the Bucha massacre, a UN report on Ukraine, and Russian missile shortages. In his closing statement, he knelt before the court and said: “I want to ask for forgiveness from all Ukrainians to whom our country has brought sorrow.” When the judge read the verdict, Ivanov responded: “This verdict is to you.” He remains imprisoned.^[40]

Aleksandra Skochilenko, an artist in St. Petersburg, received seven years for replacing five supermarket price tags with handwritten notes about civilian casualties. One read: “The Russian army bombed the art school in Mariupol, where about 400 people were hiding.” She has celiac disease, a congenital heart defect, and bipolar disorder; her medications were confiscated in detention. In court, she said: “Does our prosecutor really have such little faith in our country that he believes our sovereignty can be undermined by five little slips of paper?” Released in August 2024.^[41]

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner who had already survived two Kremlin-linked poisoning attempts, received twenty-five years: the harshest political sentence since Stalin. His crime: a speech to the Arizona House of Representatives describing “cluster bombs on residential areas, the bombings of maternity wards, hospitals, and schools.” A Moscow prison doctor told him he had “a year, eighteen months at most” to live. He understood: “It was a death sentence.”^[42]

He spent eleven months in solitary confinement: 330 days, more than twenty-two times the threshold the UN classifies as torture.^[43] Russian law limits a single solitary confinement term to fifteen days, but prison administrations circumvent this by citing new violations the moment a term expires; the pretexts are as minor as drinking water “for too long” or pocketing a half-eaten piece of bread.^[44] The isolation is not an accident of the system; it is the system. He described what it did to his mind:

After about two or three weeks, your mind really starts playing tricks on you. You start forgetting words. You start forgetting names. You start speaking to walls. You stop understanding what’s real and what’s imaginary.^[45]

Guards punished him for failing to hold his hands behind his back for a few seconds. They turned off his alarm, then punished him for not waking at 6am; prisoners were forbidden from owning clocks. In over two years of imprisonment, he spoke to his wife once and his children twice. She used a stopwatch to divide the fifteen-minute call so each child got five minutes.

Kara-Murza is an Orthodox Christian. He read the Bible in his cell, calling it “vital to his survival.” Throughout the torture, he sustained himself with one conviction: “I know I am right.”^[46]

Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician and close ally of the late Alexei Navalny, received eight and a half years for a YouTube livestream about Bucha in which he presented both the evidence and the official Russian denial. Released in August 2024.^[47]

Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual Russian-American citizen and editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was convicted in a secret two-day trial and sentenced to six and a half years for a book of anti-war stories titled “No to War.” Released in August 2024.^[48]

As of late 2025, OVD-Info documented over 1,299 people criminally prosecuted for opposing the war. At least 373 remained imprisoned. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted 22 journalists behind bars in Russia.^[49]

The Moscow Patriarchate has issued no statement defending any of these prisoners. Patriarch Kirill, who claims Russia enjoys “full freedom of religion” (Chapter 21), has never acknowledged their existence.

For those who still think this is “Anti-Russian”: these journalists are primarily Russian. Why would they risk torture and imprisonment if it wasn’t true? Were these Russians “Anti-Russian” too? How many more know these things but stay silent, fearing the same fate?

The Patriarch who blessed this war has never condemned the imprisonment of those who documented its cost.

The tradition these journalists continue is old. Soviet dissidents, documenting the crimes of their own regime at the cost of their freedom, articulated it plainly:

Our goal was to make it so that no one could say that they did not know. We do something, everyone sees it. We are telling you. And don’t tell us later that you did not know.

— Soviet dissident, interviewed in They Chose Freedom (dir. Kara-Murza), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckpn_qdmxgA, 03:48

Kara-Murza made a documentary about these dissidents. Then he told the Arizona House of Representatives what this chapter documents.

From prison, he published a critique of Patriarch Kirill, citing the Church’s own “Foundations of the Social Concept,” which prohibits clergy from assisting the state in “waging civil war or aggressive external war.” He wrote: “As an Orthodox Christian, this brings me only pain, grief, and deep sorrow.” He accused the Church leadership of placing “the authority of Caesar over the foundations of the Christian faith.”^[50]

Days before his release, guards presented him with a pre-written petition for pardon requiring him to admit guilt and repent. He refused:

First, I do not consider citizen Putin a legitimate president; I consider him a usurper, a dictator, and a murderer. And second, I am not guilty of anything. I am here solely for my views, for my convictions, for my statements against the war.^[51]

Two days later, guards returned with blank paper asking him to write about Putin. He wrote everything he believed: that Putin was not a legitimate president, that he bore personal responsibility for the deaths of Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, and for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian civilians including children. The system’s attempt to extract submission failed.

On August 1, 2024, Russia released Kara-Murza, Skochilenko, Yashin, and Kurmasheva in the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War: sixteen dissidents and journalists traded for eight Russian operatives. Russia’s key demand was Vadim Krasikov, an FSB assassin serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering a Chechen dissident in a Berlin park. Putin personally embraced Krasikov on the tarmac.^[52]

The Patriarch who blessed the war that imprisoned these witnesses said nothing when they were traded for an assassin.

Verdict

They cannot bear to carry their reasonableness so far as to be traitors to the cause of God for quietness’ sake.

— St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration 21, §25^[53]

“This sacrifice washes away all sins,” Patriarch Kirill preached.

The sacrifice is visible. It lies in the rubble of apartment buildings struck at 4 AM, in the bodies of children at Kramatorsk station, in the ashes of churches that belonged to his own Patriarchate, and those imprisoned and tortured. It looks like an overturned stroller on a street in Vinnytsia. It looks like the word “ДЕТИ” painted on the ground in letters large enough to read from orbit, ignored.

The Fathers Patriarch Kirill claims to represent would weep.

What does every bishop and every priest who commemorates Patriarch Kirill at Liturgy bless then? (The significance of commemoration is covered in Chapter 23.)

Many, even as their Orthodox Christian brethren die, are governed by indifference. It is no issue for them supposedly to commemorate a Patriarch who blesses and defends such a war.

Having learned from this Saint in a few words what a great evil indifference is, let us banish it from ourselves, brethren. For a thing evil is one that has no place in the commonwealth of Christians, for it has made everything topsy-turvy, and has begotten nearly all other evils: ungodliness, irreverence, coldness towards things divine, scorn for the actual performance of God’s life-creating commandments, obstinately offering to every objection the following God-accursed exclamations: “And what of it?” “So what?” “Why, this is nothing,” or “that is nothing.” And, briefly speaking, it is as a result of their indifference that many persons have fallen and are falling into heresy and atheism.

— St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, The Rudder (Πηδάλιον)^[54]

Somewhere in Russia, the mother still believes her son is in heaven because he died in Ukraine. The theology that told her so produced everything documented above. The Armed Forces Cathedral where it was preached still stands, its gold and mosaics intact. The churches it destroyed do not.

“But this is all propaganda”

The institutions that defend Patriarch Kirill will call this chapter propaganda. They will have to, because the alternative is to look at these images and reckon with what is being blessed.

They called it propaganda when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin. They called it propaganda when the United Nations documented summary executions in Bucha. They called it propaganda when Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko reported on a single airstrike. Russia sentenced her to six years in a penal colony. In prison, she suffered inhumane conditions and attempted suicide.

The accusation is reflexive: anything that documents what Russia has done is, by definition, propaganda and discriminatory.

Know also, that this chapter does not rely on any single government’s account.

Every incident documented above has been independently verified by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which maintains a permanent monitoring mission in Ukraine. The OSCE Moscow Mechanism, an intergovernmental body of which Russia is a member state, investigated and used the term “war crime.” The International Criminal Court has issued six arrest warrants across four proceedings. The Associated Press conducted forensic investigations with 3D reconstructions and survivor interviews. Al Jazeera, a Qatari outlet with no Western affiliation, reported from the ground at nearly every site. Meduza, a Russian independent news outlet that the Kremlin declared an “undesirable organization” precisely because its reporting could not be discredited, published its own reconstruction of the Bucha massacre.

The church destruction statistics come from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate: Kirill’s own canonical jurisdiction, documenting what Kirill’s war did to its own churches, published on its own news platform.

To dismiss this chapter, a person must simultaneously reject:

• The Moscow Patriarchate’s own website, where Kirill’s sermons blessing the war are published
• The Moscow Patriarchate’s own ecclesiastical courts, which defrocked priests for praying for peace and formally declared pacifism to be heresy
• The Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s own Holy Synod, which documented 119 of its churches destroyed and 329 damaged, on its own news platform
• A historically pro-Russian bishop (Metropolitan Agafangel, former Party of Regions regional council deputy) who called the war “genocide of the Ukrainian people”
• The OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Moscow Mechanism, an intergovernmental body of which Russia is a member state, which investigated and used the term “war crime”
• The International Criminal Court, which issued six arrest warrants across four proceedings, including for Vladimir Putin
• The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which maintains a permanent human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine
• Al Jazeera (Qatari), which reported from the ground at nearly every site documented above
• Meduza (Russian independent media), which Russia declared an “undesirable organization” precisely because its reporting could not be discredited
• The Associated Press, whose forensic investigation used 3D reconstruction, 23 survivor interviews, and was reviewed by independent war crimes experts
• Amnesty International, which also criticized Ukraine during the same conflict, making its Russia-critical findings impossible to dismiss as one-sided
• Georgetown University, which documented the Moscow Patriarchate’s institutional role in the deportation of Ukrainian children, including 58 church facilities, official transport documentation, and fundraising approved by Patriarch Kirill

No serious person can reject all of these simultaneously. The accusation of propaganda is not an argument; it is an absolute refusal to engage with the evidence.

Anyone who dismisses this evidence as “disinformation” should first explain why Russia has imprisoned, tortured, and silenced every voice that reports it.

• Aleksei Gorinov received ten years for saying “children are dying” at a meeting about a children’s drawing contest.
• Aleksandra Skochilenko received seven years for five handwritten price tags.
• Sergei Mikhailov received eight years for publishing about Bucha.
• Vladimir Kara-Murza received twenty-five years, eleven months of it in solitary confinement, for a speech in Arizona.
• Over 1,299 people have been criminally prosecuted for opposing the war; at least 373 remain imprisoned.^[55]
• Patriarch Kirill’s own courts defrocked a priest for changing one word in a prayer and formally declared pacifism to be heresy.
• Georgetown University documented that 58 of Kirill’s church institutions housed deported children and that all fundraising for the operation required the Patriarch’s personal approval.

If these events were fabricated, Russia would not need to criminalize their documentation. The censorship is itself the proof: a state that was confident in its innocence would welcome scrutiny, not imprison those who provide it. The accusation of “propaganda” is not a counter-argument; it is a confession that the facts cannot be answered on their merits.

That it is even necessary to defend a chapter about dead children and destroyed churches with a list of its sources tells the reader everything about the institution being examined, along with the degree to which they have hypnotized people as to deflect any and all evidence. A church that requires its members not to see what is documented above, and that will move to discredit anyone who shows it to others, is a church that has chosen its loyalty, but it is not loyalty to truth.

St. Basil the Great said that those who kill even in legitimate defense have unclean hands and must abstain from the Chalice for three years. Patriarch Kirill promised that battlefield death washes away all sins. The photographs above are what that promise looks like when it meets the real world: the bodies of the baptized, the rubble of their churches, the silence of a hierarchy that blessed it all. This is what the Fathers meant by unclean hands.

These are the hands.

A New Religion

By blessing war as holy, promising automatic salvation to soldiers, mandating victory-prayers, and defrocking priests who refuse, Patriarch Kirill has replaced the Orthodox tradition with a political theology that substitutes repentance with conquest: a new religion in Orthodox vesture.

The Witness Endures

Of course, Patriarch Kirill will not be Patriarch forever. The Ukraine situation will resolve. Political alignments will shift. Governments will change.

But the patristic witness endures.

St. Basil’s canon will still be binding. St. Theodore’s criterion will still define legitimate defense. Metropolitan Anthony’s condemnation of governmental ambition will still witness to how Russian hierarchs maintained patristic standards. The saints who prayed not to kill will still testify to what Orthodox holiness looks like.

This book was written for the Church, and therefore for every moment like this one. When the next war comes, when the next hierarch blesses what the Fathers condemn, when the next generation must choose between politics and patristic faithfulness, God willing, this witness will remain.

For those who must live through this moment, who see hierarchs blessing what the Fathers condemn, who watch the Church align with state power rather than patristic truth, know that you are not alone. The witness of the Fathers stands. The saints testify. The canonical Ukrainian Church under Metropolitan Onuphry, which ceased commemorating Patriarch Kirill in 2022, shows what faithfulness looks like even under persecution.

Read the Fathers for yourselves. Read the lives of the saints. See what they actually taught about war, violence, and the pollution of bloodshed. Those texts say what they say. The witness cannot be silenced by those who would prefer a different answer.

St. Sophrony of Essex, a Russian-born disciple of St. Silouan the Athonite who lived through both World Wars, spoke plainly:

I am deeply convinced that every war is a sin. Even war in defense of our homeland, our loved ones, our material and spiritual treasures, is a sin, perhaps the greatest of sins which man has invented for himself.

— St. Sophrony of Essex, Letters to His Family

Even defensive war is sin. And when war is not even defensive, when it kills more than it protects, when those it claims to defend reject the defense, it is sin compounded, blessed by those who should know better.

This war should never have been blessed.

May the witness of the Fathers guide us back to the narrow path from which we have strayed.

1. ↩

2. The UN OHCHR documented 60 killed in the Kramatorsk station attack. See OHCHR Thematic Report on Killings of Civilians, December 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/ukraine/2022/2022-12-07-OHCHR-Thematic-Report-Killings-EN.pdf. Human Rights Watch independently confirmed the use of a Russian Tochka-U with cluster munitions and called the attack an “apparent war crime.” “Death at the Station,” HRW, February 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/21/ukraine-new-light-russias-rail-station-attack. Also reported by Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/8/kramatorsk-train-station-attack-dozens-killed-ukraine-says. ↩

3. The OSCE Moscow Mechanism report (April 2022), produced by three independent experts under an intergovernmental mandate that includes Russia as a member state, found the theater attack was “most likely an egregious violation of IHL” and “a war crime.” An AP forensic investigation using 3D reconstruction, 23 survivor interviews, and two sets of architectural floor plans concluded approximately 600 were killed: https://www.apspecialprojects.com/mariupol-theater. Amnesty International’s separate investigation (53 testimonies, independent satellite and radar analysis, commissioned blast physics model) also classified it as a war crime: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/06/ukraine-deadly-mariupol-theatre-strike-a-clear-war-crime-by-russian-forces-new-investigation/. ↩

4. “Russia: Journalist Maria Ponomarenko sentenced to six years in penal colony over Ukraine bombing post,” Amnesty International, February 15, 2023. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/02/russia-journalist-maria-ponomarenko-sentenced-to-six-years-in-penal-colony-over-ukraine-bombing-post/. Amnesty International’s June 2022 investigation independently identified twelve victims of the Mariupol theater attack. In March 2025, her sentence was extended by 22 months for allegedly assaulting prison staff, charges she denied. She has been placed in solitary confinement at least 13 times in a single year and attempted suicide at least twice. A third criminal case was opened against her in October 2025. She was injected with haloperidol after complaining about conditions. Haloperidol was the drug of choice in Soviet punitive psychiatry, used to induce Parkinson’s-like symptoms in political dissidents; its reappearance signals continuity between Soviet and current Russian methods of silencing dissent. CPJ: https://cpj.org/2025/03/russian-journalist-maria-ponomarenko-sentenced-to-22-additional-months-in-prison/. Amnesty: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/03/russia-anti-war-activist-maria-ponomarenkos-prison-sentence-extended-in-escalating-repression/. ↩

5. On July 14, 2022, Russian Kalibr cruise missiles struck central Vinnytsia, a city approximately 200 miles from the front line. At least 27 people were killed, including three children, and over 200 were wounded. Among the dead was 4-year-old Liza Dmytrieva, a child with Down syndrome, killed while walking with her mother to a speech therapy session. Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/15/russia-justifies-deadly-attack-on-ukrainian-city-of-vinnytsia. VOA: https://www.voanews.com/a/robbed-of-the-most-precious-thing-missile-kills-liza-4-/6660854.html. CNBC/AP: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/17/evil-cannot-win-killed-by-russian-missile-liza-is-buried.html. ↩

6. The OSCE Moscow Mechanism report (April 2022) found the hospital was “clearly identifiable and operational,” dismissed Russia’s claims of military use, and concluded the attack was “a war crime.” See also: “Ukraine: horror at Russian attack on Mariupol maternity hospital,” United Nations, March 2022, https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113652. The WHO confirmed 24+ attacks on healthcare facilities in the first weeks of the war alone. ↩

7. On November 23, 2022, Russian S-300 missiles struck the maternity ward of Vilniansk hospital in Zaporizhzhia Oblast at approximately 2 AM, killing a two-day-old baby. The baby’s mother survived. The maternity ward was completely destroyed. HRW: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/19/doctor-describes-toll-attack-hospital-southern-ukraine. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-11-23-22/h_f952cffd1bd98d23869eaf1e49f8a935. ABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/International/newborn-killed-after-missile-strikes-ukraine-maternity-ward/story?id=93847505. ↩

8. The UN Security Council held an emergency session on the attack. The hospital’s medical director testified that it was “not only a war crime” but “far beyond the limits of humanity.” https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15761.doc.htm. UN OHCHR technical analysis found “high likelihood” of a direct Russian Kh-101 cruise missile hit, rejecting Russia’s claim that it was a Ukrainian interceptor. Also reported by Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/as-ukraines-largest-childrens-hospital-is-hit-anger-towards-russia-rages, and by Meduza (Russian independent media): https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/07/08/ukraine-s-largest-children-s-hospital-has-treated-patients-throughout-the-war-today-a-russian-missile-strike-killed-one-of-its-doctors. ↩

9. On March 17, 2023, ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) under Article 8(2)(a)(vii) of the Rome Statute and the war crime of unlawful transfer of population (children) under Article 8(2)(b)(viii). ICC press release: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and. UN News: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/03/1134732. ↩

10. Yale Humanitarian Research Lab identified 6,000+ children transported to 43 facilities (February 2023 report), later updated to 8,400+ children across 57 facilities in Russia, Belarus, and occupied territory, ages four months to seventeen years. A December 2024 report identified 314 individual Ukrainian children in coerced adoption or fostering across 21 Russian regions, describing it as “one of the largest missing persons crises since World War II.” Yale HRL: https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/fact-sheet-russias-kidnapping-and-re-education-of-ukraines-children/. Just Security analysis: https://www.justsecurity.org/105372/hrl-report-ukraine-children/. Lvova-Belova stated in July 2023 that approximately 700,000 Ukrainian minors had been “transferred” to Russia. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General documented 19,546 cases as of November 2025. Approximately 2,000 children had been returned as of February 2026. Moscow Times: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/17/total-of-2k-ukrainian-children-now-returned-from-russian-occupation-zelensky-a91982. NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156500561/russia-ukraine-children-deportation-possible-war-crime-report. On December 3, 2025, the UN General Assembly voted 91-12 to demand Russia ensure the “immediate, safe and unconditional return” of all deported children. UN News: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166507. ↩

11. Maria Lvova-Belova, Putin’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, described on state television adopting a 15-year-old boy (“Filip”) from occupied Mariupol. Her statements about Filip’s resistance and her attribution of it to “propaganda” were broadcast publicly and subsequently cited by the ICC. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/europe/russia-ukraine-children-maria-lvova-belova-intl. Meduza: https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/04/05/russian-children-s-rights-commissioner-wanted-on-war-crimes-charges-describes-life-as-the-adoptive-mother-of-a-deported-ukrainian-child. Kyiv Independent: https://kyivindependent.com/without-shame-russias-childrens-commissioner-casually-discusses-kidnapping-a-ukrainian-child/. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Lvova-Belova for “forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families” and “patriotic education.” ↩

12. Georgetown University Global Children initiative, “The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Forcible Deportation of Ukrainian Children,” https://globalchildren.georgetown.edu/responses/the-role-of-the-russian-orthodox-church-in-the-forcible-deportation-of-ukrainian-children. The report documents: (1) a 2017 cooperation agreement signed by Patriarch Kirill with Vladimir Puchkov, head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations; (2) post-invasion coordination between Bishop Panteleimon and Lt. Gen. Oleg Manuilov to establish “evacuation” protocols; (3) the Patriarchate’s Department of Church Charity receiving official deportation documentation including evacuation lists, train schedules, and evacuee distribution records; (4) 58 church institutions serving as accommodation centers; (5) a dedicated fundraising website requiring Patriarch Kirill’s approval, which collected 249.3 million rubles as of November 2022; (6) Bishop Panteleimon issuing guidelines to classify deportees as “refugees from Donbas”; (7) ROC clerics participating in re-education of deported children. See also: deportation.org.ua, https://deportation.org.ua/how-russians-deport-ukrainians-and-what-the-russian-orthodox-church-has-to-do-with-it/. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew stated: “The church and the state leadership in Russia cooperated in the crime of aggression and shared the responsibility for the resulting crimes, like the shocking abduction of the Ukrainian children.” ↩

13. The UN OHCHR documented 73 killings in Bucha specifically (54 men, 16 women, 2 boys, 1 girl) and 441 civilian killings by Russian forces across the broader Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions. “Strong indications that the summary executions may constitute the war crime of willful killing.” OHCHR Thematic Report, December 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/un-report-details-summary-executions-civilians-russian-troops-northern. Also: Meduza (Russian independent media) published a full reconstruction: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/04/08/massacre-in-bucha. German intelligence (BND) intercepted Russian soldiers discussing the killings, as reported by Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/7/germany-intercepts-russians-talk-of-bucha-killings. The Turkish Embassy in Kyiv called the images from Bucha “horrifying.” ↩

14. On March 6, 2022, Russian forces repeatedly shelled an intersection near a destroyed bridge in Irpin that hundreds of civilians were using to flee toward Kyiv. At least eight civilians were killed, including two children struck by a mortar while evacuating. Human Rights Watch investigated and described the attack as “unlawful, indiscriminate, and disproportionate.” HRW: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/08/ukraine-russian-assault-kills-fleeing-civilians. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/06/russian-forces-shelling-irpin/. ↩

15. The UN OHCHR dispatched investigators to the Izium mass graves site. See: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126801. Also reported extensively by Al Jazeera, including photographic documentation of the exhumations: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/18/photos-grim-exhumations-continue-at-mass-grave-in-ukraine. ↩

16. On March 3, 2022, Russian aircraft dropped at least eight unguided bombs on a residential intersection in central Chernihiv at approximately 12:15 PM, killing at least 47 civilians. Based on satellite imagery and witness testimony, Amnesty International concluded the majority of victims were queuing for food. Amnesty described the attack as a war crime. Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/ukraine-russian-dumb-bomb-air-strike-kills-civilians-in-chernihiv-new-investigation-and-testimony/. HRW: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/10/ukraine-russian-strikes-killed-scores-civilians-chernihiv. ↩

17. On October 5, 2023, an Iskander ballistic missile struck a cafe in the village of Hroza, Kharkiv Oblast, during a memorial service for a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Fifty-nine people were killed and at least seven injured. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko stated the village had a population of 330. The UN OHCHR investigated and found all victims were civilians. OHCHR: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/10/ukraine-report-hroza-missile-attack. Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/5/dozens-killed-attack-on-kharkiv-village. PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ukrainian-village-shattered-by-precision-missile-strike-on-cafe-hosting-fallen-soldiers-wake. ↩

18. On September 30, 2022, Russian S-300 missiles struck a civilian convoy on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia. The vehicles were queued at a checkpoint waiting to enter Russian-occupied territory to retrieve relatives and deliver humanitarian aid. At least 30 people were killed, including children, and over 80 wounded. Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/ukraine-missile-attack-on-humanitarian-convoy-in-zaporizhzhia-further-proof-of-russias-utter-disregard-for-civilian-lives/. RFE/RL: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-zaporizhzhya-strike-convoy-deaths-ukraine/32059081.html. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/zaporizhzhia-convoy-rocket-russia-ukraine/. ↩

19. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian commanders Kobylash and Sokolov (March 2024) and for Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Gerasimov (June 2024) for directing the Kh-22 and cruise missile campaigns against civilian infrastructure. https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-sergei-ivanovich-kobylash-and. The Dnipro, Kremenchuk, and other strikes documented in this section fall within the same campaign and weapons systems named in these warrants. Also reported by Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/25/icc-issues-arrest-warrants-for-russian-army-chief-former-defence-minister. ↩

20. On April 28, 2023, a Russian cruise missile launched from aircraft over the Caspian Sea struck an apartment building in Uman at approximately 4 AM, killing at least 23 people including six children. Uman is approximately 200 miles from the front line. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/28/europe/russian-strike-apartment-block-uman-intl/index.html. Kyiv Independent: https://kyivindependent.com/update-23-killed-including-4-children-in-russian-missile-attack-on-uman/. NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/28/1172687049/missile-and-drone-strikes-across-ukraine-claim-at-least-a-dozen-lives. ↩

21. On June 27, 2022, two Russian Kh-22 missiles struck the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk while over a thousand people were inside. At least 22 were killed and at least 59 wounded. The G7 and the UN condemned the attack. Russia claimed it hit a nearby weapons depot; Bellingcat and HRW investigations found evidence the shopping center was struck directly. Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/27/10-killed-from-russian-missile-strike-on-ukrainian-shopping-mall. HRW: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/30/ukraine-russian-missile-kills-civilians-shopping-center. Bellingcat: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/06/29/russias-kremenchuk-claims-versus-the-evidence/. ↩

22. On March 29, 2022, a Russian Kalibr cruise missile struck the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration building at 8:35 AM, killing at least 37 people and injuring 34. The strike collapsed the front half of the building. Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/29/seven-people-killed-22-wounded-in-ukraines-mykolaiv-attack. Truth Hounds investigation: https://truth-hounds.org/en/cases/a-calibrated-crime/. ↩

23. Russian air strikes on Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast, in late February and early March 2022 destroyed eight multi-story residential buildings and killed at least 40 civilians. UNOSAT satellite imagery analysis identified 42 structures destroyed and 122 severely or moderately damaged. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/europe/borodianka-ukraine-deaths-destruction-intl. Kyiv Independent: https://kyivindependent.com/gruesome-photos-show-borodyanka-in-ruins/. ↩

24. On August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Russian missiles struck the railway station in Chaplyne, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, killing at least 25 people including two children. Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/24/fifteen-dead-in-air-raid-on-ukraines-independence-day-zelenskyy. Meduza: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/08/25/russian-train-station-strike-kills-at-least-25-people-on-ukraine-s-independence-day. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/russia-ukraine-train-station-strike/. ↩

25. Institute for Religious Freedom (Kyiv), The Impact of the Russian Invasion on Faith-Based Communities in Ukraine, February 2024. Full report: https://irf.in.ua/files/publications/2024.03-IRF-Ukraine-report-ENG-web.pdf. Summary: https://irf.in.ua/files/publications/2024.01-IRF-Ukraine-report-summary-ENG.pdf. UOC (Moscow Patriarchate) churches suffered the most of any denomination: at least 187 destroyed or damaged. Total across all denominations: 630+ religious buildings. By December 2025, the figure had risen to 704, according to Olena Kovalska, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. Ukrinform, December 20, 2025, https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-society/4071377-russian-army-destroys-or-damages-704-religious-sites-in-ukraine-during-war.html. Interfax-Ukraine: https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/1129721.html. ↩

26. UOC Chancellor Metropolitan Anthony’s report, December 25, 2022: 75 temples destroyed (14 in monasteries), 300 churches damaged (17 in monasteries), 7 priests killed, 12 injured, 2 missing. https://spzh.life/en/news/70324-chancellor-reports-of-how-many-churches-destroyed-and-priests-killed-in-uoc. See also: “Religion on Fire: Russia is destroying primarily its own Churches in Ukraine,” The European Times, October 2022. https://europeantimes.news/2022/10/religion-on-fire-russia-is-destroying-primarily-its-own-churches-in-ukraine/. ↩

27. UOC Holy Synod data, published December 26, 2023: 119 churches and prayer rooms destroyed, 329 churches damaged, 30 monasteries destroyed or significantly damaged, 14 clerics killed, 20 wounded, 5 missing. https://spzh.life/en/news/77620-synod-of-the-uoc-publishes-data-on-perished-priests-and-destroyed-churches. A 2025 count by the Academic Workshop of Religious Studies raised the total to 643 religious structures damaged and 51 completely destroyed. https://spzh.eu/en/news/85270-experts-reveal-number-of-uoc-churches-destroyed-by-warfare. ↩

28. “Metropolitan Agafangel: ‘SMO’ is genocide of the Ukrainian people,” SPZh (UOC news outlet), July 2023. https://spzh.eu/en/news/75036-metropolitan-agafangel-smo-is-genocide-of-the-ukrainian-people. Agafangel, a former regional council deputy of the Party of Regions who historically opposed Ukrainian autocephaly and NATO integration, made the statement after the Russian missile strike on the Transfiguration Cathedral. His words were read at the UN Security Council by Ukraine’s Ambassador Kyslytsya. ↩

29. Original Greek: “«διδάσκεσθαι γάρ, οὐ τιμωρεῖσθαι χρὴ τοὺς ἀγνοοῦντας, ὥσπερ καὶ τυφλοὺς οὐ κολάζομεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειραγωγοῦμεν»” — Ἐπιστολὴ (η΄) Δημοφίλῳ θεραπευτῇ· περὶ ἰδιοπραγίας καὶ χρηστότητος, §5, PG 3, 1096C. ↩

30. Original Greek (as cited by St. Theodore): “«Αυτούς λοιπόν που μισούν τον Θεόν πρέπει να τους μισούμε και να λυώνουμε κατά των εχθρών Του, όχι όμως να τους καταδιώκουμε ή να βιαιοπραγούμε, όπως τα έθνη που δεν γνωρίζουν το Θεό».” The full epistle continues: ”«…καθὼς τὰ ἔθνη τὰ μὴ εἰδότα τὸν Κύριον καὶ Θεόν· ἀλλ’ ἐχθροὺς μὲν ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ χωρίζεσθαι ἀπ’ αὐτῶν· νουθετεῖν δὲ αὐτούς, καὶ ἐπὶ μετάνοιαν παρακαλεῖν, ἐὰν ἄρα ἀκούσωσιν, ἐὰν ἄρα ἐνδῶσι. Φιλάνθρωπος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν, καὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλει σωθῆναι, καὶ εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖν».” — Πρὸς Φιλαδελφεῖς 3, PG 5, 821B (from the longer recension, which St. Theodore treated as genuine). Source: Ἡ φιλάνθρωπη στάση τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἔναντι τῶν αἱρετικῶν, Ἱερὰ Μονὴ Παντοκράτορος. ↩

31. Original Greek: “«εἴτε προδόται ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐφύησαν τῶν κληρικῶν, μὴδὲ τοῦτο τὴν πεποίθησιν ὑμῶν τὴν εἰς Θεὸν σαθροῦτω. Οὐ γὰε τὰ ὀνόματα ἐστι τὰ σῴζοντα ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ αἱ προαιρέσεις καὶ ἡ ἀληθινὴ περὶ τὸν κτίσαντα ἡμᾶς ἀγάπη. Ἐὰν γὰρ καὶ εἷς σωθῇ ὥσπερ Λὼτ ἐν Σοδόμοις, μένειν ὀφείλει ἐπὶ τῆς ὀρθῆς κρίσεως ἀμετακίνητον ἔχων τὴν ἐν Χριστῷ ἐλπίδα, διότι οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψει Κύριος τοὺς ὁσίους αὐτοῦ.»” ↩

32. Original Greek: “«Ὅτι ὁ ταχθεὶς τὰς τῶν ἄλλων ἀγνοίας ἐπανορθοῦν, καὶ τὸν διαβολικὸν πόλεμον προμηνύειν ἐρχόμενον, οὐ δυνήσεται προβαλέσθαι τὴν ἄγνοιαν….Ἐπὶ τούτου γὰρ ἐκάθισεν, ὡς ὁ Ἰεζεκιήλ φησιν, ἵνα καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις σαλπίζη καὶ προμηνύῃ τὰ μέλλοντα δυσχερῆ. Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀπαραίτητος ἡ κόλασις, κἂν εἷς ὤν ἀπολωλώς τύχῃ»” ↩

33. SPZH, “RF special services detain a UOC cleric in Russia-controlled Luhansk region,” June 24, 2024, https://spzh.eu/en/news/80884-rf-special-services-detain-a-uoc-cleric-in-russia-controlled-luhansk-region. Forum 18, “Orthodox priest handed 4-year suspended sentence,” October 8, 2024, https://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2936. RISU: https://risu.ua/en/archimandrite-feognost-pushkov-of-the-uoc-mp-detained-by-russian-occupiers-is-released_n151391. ↩

34. ↩

35. ↩

36. ↩

37. Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code, enacted March 4, 2022, criminalizes the dissemination of “knowingly false information” about the Russian Armed Forces, with penalties up to 15 years’ imprisonment. A companion provision, Article 280.3, penalizes “discrediting” the military. What constitutes “false” is determined solely by whether a statement contradicts the Russian Defense Ministry’s official line. “Russia fights back in information war with jail warning,” Reuters, March 4, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-introduce-jail-terms-spreading-fake-information-about-army-2022-03-04/. ↩

38. Aleksei Gorinov was the first person sentenced under Article 207.3. On July 8, 2022, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow, presided over by Judge Olesya Mendeleeva, sentenced him to seven years. “Russia: Municipal councillor sentenced to seven years in jail for opposing the Ukraine war,” Amnesty International, July 8, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/07/russia-municipal-councillor-sentenced-to-seven-years-in-jail-for-opposing-the-ukraine-war/. On November 29, 2024, a military court sentenced him to an additional three years for “justifying terrorism” based on secretly recorded conversations with planted cellmates. Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov publicly reported that prison administrators planted inmates with hidden microphones. Gorinov has tuberculosis. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Judge Mendeleeva on December 31, 2024. The EU sanctioned heads of his penal colonies in February 2026. In March 2025, Rosfinmonitoring added Gorinov to Russia’s “terrorists and extremists” list. ↩

39. Sergei Mikhailov, founder and publisher of the independent newspaper LIStok in Gorno-Altaisk, Siberia, was sentenced on August 30, 2024, to eight years under Article 207.3 plus a four-year ban on journalism. CPJ, August 30, 2024, https://cpj.org/2024/08/russian-journalist-sergey-mikhaylov-sentenced-to-8-years-in-prison/. ↩

40. Roman Ivanov, a journalist for the independent outlet RusNews, was sentenced on March 6, 2024, to seven years under Article 207.3. Amnesty International, March 6, 2024, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/russia-journalist-sentenced-to-seven-years-for-speaking-out-against-war/. ↩

41. Aleksandra Skochilenko was sentenced on November 16, 2023, to seven years under Article 207.3 for replacing five supermarket price tags. Human Rights Watch, November 17, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/17/five-anti-war-price-tags-seven-years-russian-prison. Released in the August 1, 2024 prisoner exchange. ↩

42. ↩

43. United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules), adopted by the UN General Assembly, Resolution 70/175, December 17, 2015. Rule 44 defines “prolonged solitary confinement” as exceeding fifteen consecutive days. Rule 43(1)(b) prohibits it. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has stated that prolonged solitary confinement amounts to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf ↩

44. OVD-Info, “‘Hell within Hell’ and Cold Torture: People Persecuted for Political Cases in Punishment Cells,” 2024, https://ovd.info/en/hell-within-hell. Also: Mediazona, “Endless SHIZO: Have a look at the conditions of Alexei Navalny’s punishment cell,” June 2, 2023, https://en.zona.media/article/2023/06/02/shizo-trl. SHIZO (штрафной изолятор, “punishment isolation cell”) is the harshest legal punishment within a Russian penal colony. The legal maximum of fifteen days per term is routinely circumvented by citing immediate new violations upon release. Human rights lawyers confirm this is structural: “The specific criteria by which one can assess the severity of a violation and decide whether to send a person to a punishment cell are not laid out anywhere.” ↩

45. Vladimir Kara-Murza, interview with The Independent, September 2024, https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/vladimir-kara-murza-putin-russia-ukraine-b2615807.html. The Kafkaesque punishment details (hands behind back, alarm turned off, stopwatch for children’s calls) are from the same interview and from Meduza, August 2024, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/documents-on-democracy-126/. ↩

46. Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Independent, September 2024. “I know I am right” was what sustained him through solitary confinement. ↩

47. Ilya Yashin was sentenced on December 8, 2022, to eight years and six months under Article 207.3. Human Rights Watch, December 9, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/09/russia-harsh-sentence-opposition-politician. Released August 1, 2024. ↩

48. Alsu Kurmasheva was convicted in a secret two-day trial on July 19, 2024, and sentenced to six and a half years under Article 207.3. PBS, July 19, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-russian-journalist-convicted-in-a-rapid-secret-trial-court-records-show-in-russia. Released August 1, 2024. ↩

49. As of late 2025, OVD-Info documented over 1,299 people facing criminal prosecution for opposing the war, with at least 373 remaining imprisoned. OVD-Info, February 2025, https://ovd.info/en/antiwar_3_years. CPJ counted 22 journalists imprisoned in Russia as of December 1, 2025. ↩

50. Vladimir Kara-Murza, interview with Meduza, November 2023, “At the heart of Christianity is the rejection of violence,” https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/11/01/at-the-heart-of-christianity-is-the-rejection-of-violence. Kara-Murza cites Section III.8 of the Russian Orthodox Church’s “Foundations of the Social Concept,” which states: “The Church does not bless an armed rebellion against legitimate authority, since forcible alteration can entail far more disorders and grave crimes than the abuse it is intended to fight.” The same section prohibits clergy from assisting the state in “waging civil war or aggressive external war.” Kara-Murza contrasts Patriarch Kirill’s silence with Patriarch Aleksy II, who “raised his voice in defense of the innocent victims” during the Chechen Wars. ↩

51. Vladimir Kara-Murza, interview with Meduza, August 2024. Full transcript published in Journal of Democracy, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/documents-on-democracy-126/. Days before the prisoner exchange, guards presented Kara-Murza with a pre-written petition for pardon requiring him to write “I fully admit my guilt; I repent of my actions.” He refused. When guards returned with blank paper, he wrote that Putin was “a usurper, a dictator, and a murderer” who bore personal responsibility for the deaths of Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and thousands of Ukrainian civilians. ↩

52. The August 1, 2024 exchange was the largest between Russia and the West since the Cold War. Russia released sixteen people: journalists Evan Gershkovich (Wall Street Journal) and Alsu Kurmasheva (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and Russian dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, Aleksandra Skochilenko, and Oleg Orlov of Memorial. In return, Russia received eight operatives, most prominently Vadim Krasikov, an FSB agent serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen dissident, in Berlin’s Tiergarten park. Putin greeted Krasikov with an embrace on the airport tarmac, effectively acknowledging the Berlin killing as a state-ordered assassination. The Moscow Times, “What We Know About the Prisoner Exchange,” August 1, 2024, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/01/what-we-know-about-the-prisoner-exchange-between-russia-and-the-west-a85905. ↩

53. Original Greek: “«Οἳ, κἂν τἄλλα ὦσιν εἰρηνικοί τε καὶ μέτριοι, τοῦτό γε οὐ φέρουσιν ἐπιεικεῖς εἶναι, Θεὸν προδιδόναι διὰ τῆς ἡσυχίας.»” ↩

54. Original Greek: “«Ὅθεν, μαθόντες ἀπὸ τοῦτον τὸν Ἅγιον δι’ ὀλίγων, πόσον κακόν ἐστιν ἡ ἀδιαφορία, ἄς ἐξοστρακίσωμεν ταύτην ἀπὸ λόγου μας, ἀδελφοί. Ἀλλοτρία γὰρ αὕτη εἶναι τελείως τῆς πολιτείας τῶν Χριστιανῶν, διατὶ αὕτη ἄνω κάτω ἔφερε τὰ πράγματα, καὶ ὅλα σχεδὸν ἐγέννησε τὰ κακά, τὴν ἀθεοφοβίαν, τὴν ἀνευλάβειαν, τὴν ψυχρότητα, εἰς τὰ θεῖα, τὴν καταφρόνησιν εἰς τὴν ἐργασίαν τῶν ζωοποιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐντολῶν, εἰς κάθε πρᾶγμα τοῦτο τὸ θεοκατάρατον προβάλλουσα λόγιον. Καὶ τί εἶναι τοῦτο; καὶ τί εἶναι ἐκεῖνο; τοῦτο δὲν εἶναι τίποτε, ἐκεῖνο δὲν εἶναι τίποτε. Καὶ συντόμως εἰπεῖν, ἐκ τῆς ἀδιαφορίας ἔπεσαν καὶ πίπτουν οἱ πολλοὶ εἰς αἵρεσιν καὶ ἀθεΐαν·»” ↩

55. Russia’s Article 207.3 “fake news” law (March 4, 2022) criminalizes any public statement about the military that contradicts the official Russian Defense Ministry line, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose editor Dmitry Muratov won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, was forced to suspend operations in March 2022. Meduza was declared an “undesirable organization” in January 2023. Mediazona, which maintains a verified database of Russian military casualties, was designated a “foreign agent.” The Insider was banned. Forum 18’s March 2025 survey documents the systematic suppression of religious reporting in occupied territories, including banning Scripture as “extremist literature”: https://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2963. As of late 2025, over 1,299 people have been criminally prosecuted for opposing the war; at least 373 remained imprisoned. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted 22 journalists behind bars in Russia as of December 2025: https://cpj.org/2026/02/russias-repression-record/. OVD-Info three-year report: https://ovd.info/en/antiwar_3_years. The pattern is comprehensive: Russia does not refute the evidence; it imprisons those who present it. ↩