When Can War Be Considered Self-Defense?
The preceding chapter demonstrated that no war can be called holy. But even setting aside the “sacred war” rhetoric, a more fundamental question remains: does this war meet the Orthodox criteria for self-defense? The Fathers established narrow conditions under which the Church may tolerate military action. This chapter lays out those criteria and measures the invasion of Ukraine against every one of them.
The Orthodox Teaching on War
What does the Orthodox Church actually teach about when war is permissible?
The Fathers recognized only one narrow exception: when foreign powers attack Christian peoples for their faith, those Christians may defend themselves and the weak as a last resort.
The patristic witness follows.
The ancient patristic criteria
In Canon XIII, St. Basil the Great gives the basic outline and conditions under which killing in war is not classified as murder:
Our Fathers did not consider the killings committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all, on the score, it seems to me, of allowing a pardon to men fighting on behalf of chastity and true religion.
— St. Basil the Great, Canon XIII, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202188.htm[1]
Notice the men killing in war are only pardoned under chastity and true religion. Outside of these narrow boundaries, there is absolutely no pardon, nor any excuse for killing in war. Those who use the words of St. Basil the Great to justify the war then, without making any efforts to point out these boundaries, are not properly representing him.
What does “true religion” mean?
The Greek original is precise. St. Basil writes that the Fathers granted pardon to those fighting “ὑπὲρ σωφροσύνης καὶ εὐσεβείας”: on behalf of chastity and eusebeia.
The word εὐσέβεια (eusebeia), rendered here as “true religion,” is not a vague term in patristic usage. It means, specifically, the Orthodox Christian faith.
As Norman Russell notes in his edition of the Life of Gregory Palamas by Philotheos Kokkinos:
The ‘true faith’ is eusebeia, literally ‘piety,’ which always signifies orthodoxy.
— Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam, p. 82
The translators of St. Symeon of Thessaloniki’s Dialogue Against All Heresies confirm the same equivalence, noting that when St. Paul writes “great is the mystery of εὐσεβείας” (1 Tim. 3:16), “‘Orthodoxy’ here translates eusebeia, literally ‘piety’ or ‘godliness.’ It is the integrated Orthodoxy of a pious life and an upright faith that marks true Christians.”[2]
The authoritative commentary on this very canon, found in the Rudder (Pedalion) of St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, removes all ambiguity about what εὐσέβεια means in Canon XIII:
Those men who slay men in the course of war are fighting for the faith and for the maintenance of sobriety. For, if once the barbarians and infidels should succeed in gaining the upper hand, neither piety will be left, since they disregard it and seek to establish their own wicked faith and bad belief, nor sobriety and maintenance of honor, seeing that their victory would be followed by many instances of violation and ravishment of young women and of young men.
— St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, The Rudder, Commentary on Canon XIII of St. Basil[3]
Even in this best-case scenario, where soldiers are genuinely defending the faith against non-Christian aggressors, St. Nikodemos notes that St. Basil still does not grant them a clean bill:
The Saint [St. Basil] goes on to add, however, on his own part, not a definitive Canon, but an advisory and indecisive suggestion that although these men who slay others in war were not considered murderers by the more ancient Fathers, yet, since their hands are not unstained by blood, it might perhaps be well for them to abstain from communion for three years solely as regards the Mysteries, but not to be expelled, that is to say, from the Church, like other penitents.
— St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, The Rudder, Commentary on Canon XIII of St. Basil[4]
St. Nikodemos describes this as an “advisory and indecisive suggestion,” but as he himself explains elsewhere in the Rudder, and as demonstrated in Chapter 16, this canon was accepted by the Church as binding law, not mere advice. When Emperor Nikephoros Phokas asked the Church to honor soldiers who died fighting Muslims as martyrs, the Patriarch and the Synod refused, citing this very canon as authoritative. The “advisory” framing reflects St. Basil’s deference to the earlier Fathers; the Church’s reception of it was definitive.
Fr. John McGuckin, the Orthodox patristics scholar, confirms this reading. He calls St. Basil’s phrase “sobriety and piety” (σωφροσύνης καὶ εὐσεβείας) “code language for the defense of Christian borders from the ravages of pagan marauders.”[5]
Notice the scenario St. Nikodemos describes: “barbarians and infidels” (Βάρβαροι καὶ ἄπιστοι) gaining the upper hand, imposing “their own wicked faith” (κακοπιστίαν), and committing mass violence against the Christian population. This is the Ottoman conquest. This is the Persian and Gothic raids that threatened the Roman provinces in St. Basil’s own time. This is not one Orthodox Christian nation invading another. Orthodox Christian Ukrainians are not “barbarians and infidels.” They are not seeking to “establish their own wicked faith.” They share the same baptism, the same Creed, the same Liturgy. To apply this canon to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to empty the Fathers’ words of their meaning and twist them entirely.
The saints do not present “true religion” as ethnic identity, political alliances, or vague humanitarian concern, but as Orthodox Christianity, the right worship of God. An Orthodox nation attacking another Orthodox nation cannot, by definition, be fighting “on behalf of εὐσέβεια”: you cannot defend the faith by killing those who share it. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening.
St. Theodore the Studite makes this criterion unmistakably clear. In his letter to Theophilus of Ephesus, he defends St. Symeon the Wonderworker’s request for imperial military action:
As for the fact that you also included Saint Symeon the Wonderworker in your argument, do not think, master, that he was fighting against Christ or against his superior teachers; rather, what then? The reason he once asked the Emperor [to act] was because a certain nation was harming the Christian people, that is, so that Christians might not be defeated by the Samaritans. And this is good, and even now we pray the same—that the Scythians and Arabs who kill the people of God may be fought by the emperors and not be spared.
— St. Theodore the Studite, Letter to Theophilus of Ephesus
The pattern is the same as Canon XIII: a foreign, non-Orthodox power (“Scythians and Arabs”) persecuting “the people of God.” Not political disputes. Not ethnic conflicts. Not regime change or sphere-of-influence wars.
This criterion is decisive for evaluating the invasion of Ukraine, as the tests below will demonstrate.
St. Nikolai Velimirovich, a canonized Serbian saint, states the same criterion independently:
The followers of Christ fight against enemies for the purity of the faith. The goal of this struggle is not to let enemies rule over Christians and not to allow enemies, together with the body, to kill the soul as well, by forcing Christians to renounce the faith.
— St. Nikolai Velimirovichh, cited in Archpriest Viktor Vasilevich, “The Theme of War in the Works of St. Nikolai of Serbia (Velimirovich),” azbyka.ru
The same εὐσέβεια criterion as St. Basil and St. Theodore, stated independently by a canonized Serbian saint: the only permissible goal is preventing Christians from being forced to renounce the faith. The invasion of Ukraine does not approach this criterion.
St. Philaret of Moscow, in the standard Russian catechism, confirms the same narrow allowance: killing in war is permitted only in defense:
Is it in all cases murder, and against this commandment, to kill? No. It is not murder, nor against this commandment, when life is taken in the execution of duty; as, when a criminal is punished with death, by just judgment; nor, again, when an enemy is killed in war, in defense of our sovereign and country.
— St. Philaret of Moscow, The Longer Catechism of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Question 575
The key phrase is “in defense.” Even in the context of stating that killing in such cases is not classified as murder, St. Philaret restricts this allowance to defensive war only. Offensive wars, wars of expansion, wars of “preventive” aggression: none of these fall under his permission. And even within this narrow allowance, as Chapter 17 demonstrated, the soul is still wounded. It remains a tragic exception that calls for repentance and healing, not a clean or holy act.
The pattern is even consistent across centuries.
St. Sergius of Radonezh in the fourteenth century gave his blessing to Grand Prince Dimitri to fight a defensive war against the Tatar Khan only after he was assured that every possible means of reconciliation had already been tried. The blessing came at the very end, not at the beginning.[6]
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky): A Russian Hierarch Applying the Same Criteria
Has any Orthodox hierarch ever applied these criteria to real wars? Has any Russian bishop, deeply committed to his nation, actually measured Russian wars against this standard and found some wanting?
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev (1863-1936) did exactly this. He was one of the most influential Russian theologians of the early 20th century, the leading candidate for Patriarch in 1917 (he won the popular vote but St. Tikhon was selected by drawing of lots)[7], and the founding Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). No one can accuse Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky of being anti-Russian or indifferent to Russian interests. He defended Russian participation in war, but within the patristic framework.
The Test: Which Choice Produces the Least Harm?
Metropolitan Anthony articulated a clear test for evaluating whether war is truly defensive and justified:
In such situations the following question must be asked: which choice will produce the least harm and the greatest good for the Orthodox faith and one’s native people?
— Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), “The Christian Faith and War,” https://www.rocorstudies.org/2016/11/16/the-christian-faith-and-war/
Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky establishes the burden of proof: those claiming a war is defensive must demonstrate that refusing to fight would produce consequences worse than the bloodshed of warfare itself, else it does not meet the Orthodox definition of self-defense.
Fighting a war which will result in more deaths of Orthodox Christians than not fighting this war cannot be interpreted as self-defense. Later on in this chapter, we will show that the war and invasion of Ukraine fails this requirement catastrophically.
When Metropolitan Anthony defended Russia’s participation in World War I, he applied this test rigorously. He asked what would happen if Russia had simply submitted to Germany and Austria-Hungary:
Should we quietly have submitted to the Germans? Should we have imitated their cruel and coarse manners? Planted in our country in place of the holy deeds of Orthodox piety the worship of the stomach and the wallet? No! It would be better for the whole nation to die than to be fed with such heretical poison!
— Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), “The Christian Faith and War,” https://www.rocorstudies.org/2016/11/16/the-christian-faith-and-war/
The words he uses matter. His conclusion of whether to submit to another country or not is for reasons of heresy, which is the exact thing that corrupts True Religion (Orthodoxy).
This has been completely inverted in our time. No one cites heresy as a reason to engage or not engage in war, or even cites heresy in almost any contemporary church matter. Almost no attention is paid to heresy, as if it were a secondary matter. However, for the saints and past gone venerable hierarchs and leaders, it was a primary matter. Those who invoke war in our contemporary times manifestly do not do so for matters of heresy, but for utterly secular and moral reasons.
(Chapter 24 will address the common misunderstanding of the primacy and relevancy of heresy in greater detail.)
More precisely, Metropolitan Anthony argued:
If after the declaration of war on us by Germany and Austria we could have persuaded them to give up their intentions, or, having submitted ourselves to their power without fighting and having agreed to the destruction of Russia as a state, we could have had reason to hope that as a result the Orthodox faith would not have been shaken, that morals would not have been corrupted even more, and that the moral values of the Russian soul would not generally have perished, then, of course, there would have been no reason for us to fight.
— Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), “The Christian Faith and War,” https://www.rocorstudies.org/2016/11/16/the-christian-faith-and-war/
The threat he saw was real, immediate, and existential: destruction of Orthodox faith (the same true religion, as St. Basil the Great states) under hostile occupation, corruption of morals, and the annihilation of Russian spiritual life. In that specific context, he judged war to be the lesser evil, still spiritually dangerous and requiring penance, but tolerated as a last resort against a greater catastrophe.
For the Fathers, war is never holy; at best it is reluctantly tolerated as a lesser evil. Without credible evidence of such an existential threat to Orthodoxy (True Religion), without systematic persecution that military action would actually prevent, without demonstrating that more harm would result from inaction than from war itself, the “lesser evil” claim simply fails.
St. Martyr Pavel Borotinsky: Refusing War for an Unjust Cause
The same discernment, determining whether a war serves Christ or opposes Him, was applied by St. Martyr Pavel Borotinsky, writing from within Soviet Russia in 1928.
Facing the question of whether Orthodox Christians could participate in future Soviet wars, he applied the criterion directly:
Can a Christian be a participant in a future war when he knows that its goal is to defend the conquered territory of the revolution, that is, satanism? Of course not.
— St. Martyr Pavel Borotinsky, “The Attitude of a Christian to Soviet Power from the Point of View of Orthodox Moral Teaching” (Section 3, “Война”), May 1928. http://krotov.info/acts/20/1927/borotinsky.htm
Many attempt to put forth a strawman argument which asks “is war always wrong?” However, the more appropriate question is this: does this war serve Christ or oppose Him?
Of course New Martyr Pavel did not condemn all defensive war; he condemned participation in a war whose goal was fundamentally opposed to Christ. And this is the important question that needs to be asked, and answered.
St. Pavel Borotinsky was martyred for his witness. His discernment cost him his life. The Orthodox Church glorified him precisely because he refused to subordinate Christ to political expedience, and this is exactly what the war in Ukraine has done.
”This Is Not What Our Saints Teach”
A common dismissal of this entire line of argument is that it reflects a Western, liberal, or pacifist premise foreign to the Russian Orthodox tradition. The claim runs something like this: “You don’t understand Russian spirituality. Our saints blessed armies. Our Church has always stood with the nation. This critique comes from outside, from people who don’t know what it means to be Russian and Orthodox.”
Very well. Let us answer from inside.
Ss. Boris and Gleb: The Foundation of Russian Sanctity
The first canonized saints of the Russian Orthodox Church are Ss. Boris and Gleb, the sons of St. Vladimir the Baptizer of Rus’, glorified as passion-bearers (страстотерпцы) within a generation of their deaths. They are not venerated simply for conquest or defensive victory. When their brother Svyatopolk sought to kill them for political reasons after the death of their father, they refused to raise armies in self-defense. They chose death rather than shed Christian blood in an inter-Christian dispute, and the Russian Church venerates them as the paradigm of Christian princely sanctity specifically because of that refusal.
The very foundation of Russian sainted rulership is two princes who would rather die than fight their Christian brother. That is the first chapter of the Russian hagiographic tradition. Not a Western import. Not a liberal premise. The Russian Church’s own founding witness.
Patriarch Kirill’s war theology inverts this foundation completely. Boris and Gleb refused to shed Christian blood to preserve their own thrones. Patriarch Kirill has blessed the shedding of Orthodox Christian blood to expand a political “Russian World.” They are the paradigm of Russian princely restraint; he promises heavenly reward to soldiers who practice the exact opposite (Chapter 16). The argument required to justify his war theology against the witness of Ss. Boris and Gleb is that the first canonized Russian saints were wrong. No Russian Orthodox Christian faithful to the tradition can make that argument, because the tradition begins with them.
Wars Metropolitan Anthony defended, and why
Metropolitan Anthony did not defend every Russian war. He did not simply go along with whatever war his country chose to fight, claiming that the superiors knew better. No; he evaluated each one according to the patristic criteria described above. When those criteria were met, he supported the war. When they were not, he condemned it.
He consistently defended three Russian wars that fit the pattern:
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russian territory. France, a non-Orthodox power, crossed into Russia. Russia’s response was a defensive expulsion of foreign invaders from its own soil, with the result that Russian sovereignty and Orthodoxy were preserved.
In 1877-78, Russia went to war against the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim power, in order to free Orthodox Christians in the Balkans from what he calls “centuries of Turkish yoke” and brutal occupation. Here Russia intervened to liberate fellow Orthodox from non-Christian oppression.
In 1914, Germany and Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia after Russian mobilization to protect Orthodox Serbia. Russia responded defensively to declarations of war from non-Orthodox powers. Metropolitan Anthony believed that defeat and occupation would destroy Orthodoxy and Russian moral life.
In each of these cases, a foreign power either attacked Russian territory, occupied Orthodox lands, or declared war first. In all of these cases, Russia responded to invasion in its own territory, which then rightly fits the definition of self-defense. This is an important point to register.
This also matches exactly the pattern sketched by St. Theodore the Studite: emperors fighting “Scythians and Arabs who kill the people of God,” that is, foreign, non-Orthodox powers attacking Orthodox Christians for their faith.
Thus, such wars in Russia were truly self-defense, as Russia did not initiate the war but responded, and fought the war specifically for preservation of true religion, which is the Orthodox Christian faith itself. This is why Metropolitan Anthony supported these wars.
However, there were clearly wars Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky did not support.
A war Metropolitan Anthony condemned, and why
For the same reason, Metropolitan Anthony also condemned wars that did not meet these criteria. He explicitly criticized Russia’s participation in the Hungarian campaign of 1848:
Of course, there have been dynastic wars, expressing only the will of the government and harming the historic mission of national life, for example the Hungarian campaign of 1848.
— Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), “The Christian Faith and War,” https://www.rocorstudies.org/2016/11/16/the-christian-faith-and-war/
He then states the principle in general terms:
If a king or government undertakes a war for any sort of greed or love of glory either by official order or by its own free will, and not for a substantive need entrusted to it by the state, then of course it is guilty and has sinned.
— Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), “The Christian Faith and War,” https://www.rocorstudies.org/2016/11/16/the-christian-faith-and-war/
Here is a Russian hierarch, deeply committed to Russian Orthodoxy and national life, condemning a war fought by his own state. Why? Because it was driven by political ambition rather than real defensive need. The Church, in his view, cannot simply bless whatever war the government calls necessary.
Do Patriarch Kirill and his supporters not understand that a Russian Orthodox Christian is simply not obliged to support everything their Russian government supports? Or do they insult and persecute anyone who would dare contradict the government?
In summary: the war must actually meet the patristic criteria: foreign aggression against Orthodox lands, or protection of Orthodox Christians from non-Orthodox persecution. Otherwise it is sin, no matter how it is packaged and marketed by leaders, Hierarchs, Patriarchs, or whoever it may be.
Defense means responding to attack, not initiating it
A key part of Metropolitan Anthony’s argument for World War I is the simple fact of who started it. He stresses that “Germany and Austria declared war on us,” and that Germany had long prepared to extend its control to the East. Russia responded, it did not initiate. For Metropolitan Anthony, this point is central to his argument. The side that crosses borders first and initiates hostilities cannot claim the mantle of defensive war.
This lines up exactly with the earlier patristic witness. St. Theodore speaks of emperors fighting those who “kill the people of God,” not of emperors launching preemptive invasions. St. Sergius blesses battle only after attempts at peace have failed. The Fathers do not contemplate blessing aggressive wars and calling them “defense.”
Metropolitan Anthony’s judgment on Russian history is therefore clear. Legitimate wars are those where Russia responds to foreign aggression or liberates Orthodox Christians from long-standing non-Orthodox occupation. When Russia initiates invasion, as in 1848, the war fails the test.
The narrow window established
Across the centuries, the witness is remarkably consistent: In the ancient Church, St. Basil and St. Theodore speak of defensive protection of the weak and of the Christian people from non-Orthodox aggression, always as a concession and always with an awareness of spiritual defilement. In medieval Russia, St. Sergius blesses a defensive battle against foreign Muslim invaders, only after every other avenue has been tried. In modern Russia, Metropolitan Anthony defends wars that fit this pattern (1812, 1877, 1914) and condemns wars of imperial ambition (1848), while insisting that even defensible war is a lesser evil and never “holy.”
Thus, this is a principle upheld by a traditional Russian Orthodox hierarch in Metropolitan Anthony, applying the ancient patristic standard to evaluate his own nation’s wars, not a modern liberal invention. The Fathers, ancient and modern, Greek and Russian, give us only one narrow window. Defensive, last-resort protection of Orthodox Christians from non-Orthodox religious persecution or genuinely existential external threat, undertaken only when the alternative would produce demonstrably worse consequences for the Orthodox faith and the people. And even those who kill in such narrowly allowed wars are still treated as spiritually wounded, penitent, and excluded from the Chalice for years (as demonstrated in Chapter 16).
St. Paisios the Athonite:
War can only be defensive. No war is pleasing to God, but in this case He forgives.
— St. Paisios the Athonite, cited in Vasilevich, “Theme of War”
And even within this narrow allowance, the saints show reluctance rather than eagerness, as the following examples demonstrate.
The textbook historical case of an Orthodox ruler whose war met every one of these patristic criteria, and whose dying words refused the very possessive that “Russian World” theology inverts, is treated in Chapter 20.
St. Martin of Tours refused to continue fighting after his conversion, saying, “I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight.” St. Mercurius laid aside his military honors after his miraculous victory. Whenever they could avoid military service, the saints did.
Elder Savvas: Reluctance Even in Legitimate Self-Defense
This reluctance persists even when the war is genuinely defensive.
When World War II reached Greece and Italy invaded, the monks of Logovarda Monastery were called to arms by the Greek state. Among them was Elder Savvas, under the spiritual guidance of Elder Philotheos Zervakos. His first reaction was distress:
I was a soldier in the artillery, now I will be put again in the front lines and will shoot at people while I’m a monk.
Elder Philotheos answered:
What are you saying, my father? We are in defense. You will fight normally. The Italians and Germans will come and they will rape your mother and sister…
Elder Savvas shaved his beard and wore the soldier’s uniform. He comforted himself:
The good life makes the monk. Now we go for faith and fatherland.
— Elder Alypios, Elder Savvas of the Holy Mountain, p. 4
Note carefully what happened. This was a textbook case of legitimate self-defense: a foreign power invading Orthodox Greece, threatening the faith and the people, with no alternative but to resist. Elder Philotheos’s reasoning was precisely the patristic framework: “We are in defense.” The Italian and German forces would violate the people if unopposed. Every previous criterion of self-defense was met.
And yet Elder Savvas’s first instinct was grief, not eagerness. He did not rejoice at the opportunity to fight for Orthodoxy. He mourned that he would “shoot at people while a monk.” He had to be persuaded by his elder that this was a case of genuine self-defense. He found peace not by embracing holy war, but by accepting a tragic duty for “faith and fatherland.”
This is the Orthodox attitude toward even legitimate defensive war: reluctant acceptance as a last resort, not triumphant proclamation.
The contrast with Patriarch Kirill’s rhetoric could not be sharper.
Patriarch Pavle of Serbia: The Standard Applied
Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, beloved as an ascetic of piety, confirmed the same defensive-only standard:
A war of conquest is not only impermissible for Christians, but subject to condemnation, while a defensive, liberating war is blessed.
— Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, cited in Jovan Janich, Let Us Be Human: The Life and Word of Patriarch Pavle (Moscow, 2010), p. 322; also in Vasilevich, “Theme of War”
This is not an ancient canon being cited. This is a 20th-century patriarch who lived through the breakup of Yugoslavia, who watched his own people suffer war, and who still applied the same standard the Fathers established: conquest is condemned, only defense is blessed. It is remarkable that Patriarch Pavle, who served during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, when every temptation existed to sanctify war, still held to the patristic line.
There is simply no concept in the Fathers of launching aggressive wars and calling them defensive, of blessing conflicts between Orthodox Christians, of sanctifying governmental ambition as “holy war,” or of initiating invasion and then claiming “self-defense.” When Russian wars met the narrow criteria, they were defended only as tragic necessity. When they did not, they were condemned. This is the standard that must be applied before any appeal to “self-defense” can claim to be Orthodox.
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky): Confirming the Framework
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), the Third First Hierarch of ROCOR, confirmed his predecessor’s framework. Both founding hierarchs of ROCOR agree: war is evil, and only defensive war can be tolerated.
War is evil and an extremely sad phenomenon and deeply contrary to the very essence of Christianity. Words cannot express how joyous it would be if people ceased to war with one another and peace reigned on earth. Sad reality speaks quite otherwise, however. Only some dreamers far removed from reality and some narrowly one-sided sectarians can pretend that war can be omitted from real life.
— Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), cited in “The Archpastors of Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia on War,” Orthodox Life, April 27, 2024. https://orthodoxlife.org/contemporary-issues/archpastors-of-rocor-on-war/
Metropolitan Philaret then provides a patristic example that distinguishes defensive obligation from aggressive warfare. When Persia invaded the Byzantine Empire, St. Athanasius of the Holy Mountain told the monk-general Tornikian, who had refused to return to military service:
We are all children of our homeland, and we are obligated to defend it. Our obligation is to guard the homeland from enemies by prayers. Nevertheless, if God deems it expedient to use both our hands and our heart for the common weal, we must submit completely… If you do not obey the ruler, you will have to answer for the blood of your compatriots whom you did not wish to save, and for the destruction of the churches of God.
— St. Athanasius of the Holy Mountain, cited by Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), Orthodox Life, April 27, 2024, https://orthodoxlife.org/contemporary-issues/archpastors-of-rocor-on-war/
The conditions are precise: a foreign invasion, the defense of compatriots and churches, a last resort after prayer. Philaret concludes from this and other examples:
Only such wars of defense are recognized in Christian teaching.
— Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), Orthodox Life, April 27, 2024, https://orthodoxlife.org/contemporary-issues/archpastors-of-rocor-on-war/
ROCOR Applied the Framework to Serbia (1999)
When Orthodox Serbs were the victims of military aggression in 1999, ROCOR applied this same framework. The entire Synod of Bishops issued a statement condemning NATO’s bombing of Serbia:
God and His saints are not mocked. The blasphemous and pitiless assault by an overwhelming military force against a small and helpless people, which is bringing suffering upon the innocent residents of Kosovo and all Serbia, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, will be turned back upon those who are wielding this sword of injustice. We believe, and we see countless proofs of this in history, that retribution will come not only in this age, but in that which is to come, as well. O you mighty of this world! If you do not fear God, fear yourselves, for aggression invariably returns upon those who tread upon its pernicious path!
— Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, “Statement Concerning the Military Action Being Undertaken in the Balkans,” Orthodox Life, Vol. 49, No. 2, 1999
The contrast with Moscow’s response to Russia’s own war against Orthodox Ukraine could not be more drastic.
In 1999, ROCOR condemned a stronger power bombing a weaker Orthodox nation, calling it “a barbaric assault on the defenseless populace” and invoking divine retribution against the aggressor. In 2022, the Moscow Patriarchate blessed a stronger power invading a weaker Orthodox nation, calling it a metaphysical struggle against the Antichrist.
ROCOR defended the victim; Moscow blessed the aggressor.
With the patristic consensus now understood, the invasion of Ukraine can now be measured against this standard.
Does the Invasion of Ukraine Meet Orthodox Criteria?
Whether Russia had political or strategic reasons to invade has absolutely nothing to do with Orthodox Christianity. Anyone who makes such an argument is avoiding the position of our saints.
The only relevant question is whether this war meets the Orthodox criteria for the Church to bless it.
Test One: Does It Meet St. Theodore the Studite’s Criterion?
St. Theodore’s criterion, established above: war is permitted only when non-Orthodox persecutors attack Orthodox Christians for their faith. Does the invasion of Ukraine meet this standard?
What Russia Claimed
Russia claimed genocide against Russian-speaking populations in the Donbas region. This is the primary justification offered for the invasion.
Notice what this claim is: it is an ethnic and linguistic persecution claim.
Russia has never argued that Orthodox Christians in Ukraine were being systematically persecuted for their Orthodox faith by non-Orthodox persecutors. Neither Patriarch Kirill nor the Russian government has presented credible evidence that Orthodox Christians as Orthodox Christians were being targeted for religious persecution.
The argument has consistently been about Russian-speaking populations, ethnic Russians, political allegiances. This is a fundamentally different claim from what St. Theodore permits.
Fr. Andrei Kordochkin, who led the March 2022 clergy petition against the war with 300 signatories and was subsequently suspended, exposed how the “Russian World” ideology performs this sleight-of-hand:
The concept of Russian World… presents the invasion of Russia into Ukraine as a form of defense… It’s not Russia that invaded Ukraine, but it’s this Russian world which defends itself on Ukrainian territory.
— Fr. Andrei Kordochkin, Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, September 17, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSp-10UsoOE&t=1899s
The aggressor reframes itself as defender by inventing a borderless “Russian world” that supposedly needs protection. But this is precisely the kind of ideological construction the Fathers never contemplated. St. Theodore spoke of emperors defending Orthodox Christians from Scythians and Arabs, not of inventing civilizational categories that transform invasion into “defense.”
St. Nikolai Velimirovich identified this very pattern as the root cause of war:
The chief cause of wars is the arrogant exaltation of person over person and of nation over nation. From boastful pride the mind is darkened, and people do not see God. And as soon as they lose sight of God, they immediately lose the awareness that one person is another’s brother.
— St. Nikolai Velimirovich, cited in Vasilevich, “Theme of War”
“The arrogant exaltation of nation over nation.” This is the “Russian World” ideology described with precision by a canonized saint.
Every Investigation Found No Evidence
Even if we were to take this into account, the genocide allegations have been investigated by multiple credible international bodies. The findings are unanimous:
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) stated explicitly that there is no evidence of genocide being committed by Ukraine against Russian-speaking citizens. The IAGS concluded that such claims have been exposed by independent observers as baseless and fabricated.
The IAGS has recognized actual genocides even when politically inconvenient: the Turkish genocide of Christian minorities (Armenian, Assyrian, Greek populations), and recently criticized Israel regarding Gaza. When they investigate genocide claims, they follow evidence. Suffice to say, this is not a political body with Western bias that one may easily dismiss. Their finding regarding Ukraine was unambiguous: no evidence.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) examined Russia’s genocide allegations. The court stated clearly in its March 16, 2022, provisional measures order that it is “not in possession of evidence substantiating the genocide allegations of the Russian Federation.” The Court ordered Russia to immediately suspend military operations.
The United Nations Human Rights Council commissioned an independent investigation. Their reports documented extensive Russian war crimes including summary executions, torture, sexual violence, and unlawful deportations of Ukrainian civilians. In its March 2023 report, the commission found no evidence to support allegations of genocide by Ukraine against Russian-speaking populations.[8]
Every credible international body that investigated found the same thing: no evidence.
Even the Claim Itself Doesn’t Meet the Criterion
Set aside the complete absence of evidence. Even if one accepted the genocide claim at face value, it still would not meet St. Theodore’s criterion.
St. Theodore permits war when “the Scythians and Arabs who kill the people of God may be fought by the emperors.” This is religious persecution. This is non-Orthodox killing Orthodox for their faith.
The Russian genocide claim, even taken as stated, is about ethnic Russians being killed by ethnic Ukrainians in a civil conflict. Both populations are majority Orthodox Christian. This is Orthodox killing Orthodox in an ethnic and political conflict, not non-Orthodox persecuting Orthodox.
This is precisely what St. Theodore’s criterion excludes.
The Canonical Church Rejected the War
Even if Russia had claimed religious persecution (which it did not), and even if evidence existed (which it does not), there is one body with the authority to recognize such persecution and request military intervention: the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onuphry.
Has Metropolitan Onuphry requested military intervention?
No. The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) rejected the invasion from the very first day.
Metropolitan Onuphry called it “fratricidal war” with “no justification either before God or before people.”
Wouldn’t it make sense, as Orthodox Christians, to place our faith in the canonical leader of the Ukrainian church when they themselves condemn the war happening on their own soil? And what exactly would be the basis for such distrust, other than blind support for Patriarch Kirill?
On May 27, 2022, the UOC council ceased commemoration of Patriarch Kirill and declared full autonomy from Moscow. By 2025, the primate stated plainly: “We are no longer part of the Patriarchate of Moscow.”
It is important to understand that the UOC referenced here is the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine under Metropolitan Onuphry, not the contested OCU created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. For why that distinction matters, see Chapter 29. The full narrative of what the UOC did, including the 437 priests’ appeal, the diocesan cessation orders, and the clergy Russia tortured and killed, is documented in Part VII.
If Russia invaded to protect Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, why did the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine condemn the invasion as unjustifiable before God? Why did they sever communion with the patriarch who blessed it? Why would one separate from the person defending them, except if the person was not defending them, but persecuting them?
No one seems to be able to offer any legitimate answer to this, because it forces them to answer questions that threaten their cognitive dissonance.
Who then, is Russia Protecting?
Who is Patriarch Kirill protecting? Not the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: they condemned the war and severed ties with him and Moscow. Not the faithful under Metropolitan Onuphry: he rejected the invasion on day one. Not Orthodox Christians generally: this is Orthodox killing Orthodox.
Russia sends Chechen Muslim soldiers, conscripts Russian Orthodox young men, and sends them to kill Ukrainian Orthodox young men. There is no one left to protect.
Putin’s own war essay (July 2021) tells us all we need to know: it calls Ukraine an “anti-Russia project,” claims “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” and warns that Russia will “never allow our historical territories” to be “used against Russia.”[9]
The word “Orthodox” appears thirteen times, overwhelmingly in historical context. Putin does briefly allege interference in church life and “seizure of churches,” but the essay’s grievances are overwhelmingly territorial and political: Ukraine as an “anti-Russia project,” the claim that Crimea was illegally transferred, and NATO expansion. The “holy war to protect Orthodoxy” narrative came later, after the invasion began, as religious cover for imperial ambition.
Russia is destroying primarily the churches of those who still commemorate Patriarch Kirill. Fourteen UOC priests have been killed by Russian soldiers; Patriarch Kirill has not expressed condolences. The evidence, documented in full in Part V (Chapter 22), is horrendous. The invasion created the very persecution it claimed to prevent.
Thus, the invasion clearly fails St. Theodore’s test.
Test Two: Does It Meet Metropolitan Anthony’s Pattern?
As established earlier in this chapter, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), the founding Metropolitan of ROCOR, defended certain Russian wars while condemning others. His pattern was consistent: he defended wars where Russia responded defensively to foreign aggression (1812 against Napoleon, 1877 against Ottoman persecution of Orthodox Christians, 1914 when Germany and Austria declared war). He condemned wars of governmental ambition (1848 invasion of Hungary).
Does the invasion of Ukraine match the defensive pattern or the aggressive pattern?
On February 24, 2022, Russian military forces crossed the internationally recognized border between Russia and Ukraine. Russian forces advanced on multiple fronts toward Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other major Ukrainian cities. Russian missiles struck targets deep inside Ukrainian territory.
Russia initiated military action across an international border. This wasn’t Napoleon marching on Moscow, nor Germany declaring war and invading Russian territory.
Whatever political tensions preceded the invasion, whatever concerns Russia had about NATO expansion or Western influence, Russia initiated the cross-border military action.
By Metropolitan Anthony’s own standard (who declared war, who crossed borders first, who initiated aggression), Russia is the aggressor. Again, this is Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky’s standard, and so if people wish to disagree, they will have to disagree with his standard that he laid out.
First Resort, Not Last
If Russia genuinely feared for the safety of Russian-speaking populations in Donbas, alternatives existed: accept refugees fleeing conflict zones, provide humanitarian aid and support, pursue diplomatic solutions through international mediation. Russia chose large-scale military invasion instead. This was its first resort, not last, and war can never be the first resort for an Orthodox Christian.
Putin’s own essay, published seven months before the invasion, already laid out the ideological framework: Ukraine as an “anti-Russia project,” historical grievances about Crimea, warnings about “our historical territories.”[9] The religious justification came later, after the invasion began. This was not a reluctant last resort; it was a planned initiative dressed in defensive language.
The parallels to the 1848 Hungary invasion are striking, because Metropolitan Anthony condemned that invasion specifically because it was governmental ambition rather than legitimate defense. Even if the invasion served Russian strategic interests, even if Russia believed it was protecting stability or preventing threats, the Church could not bless it as a defensive war.
By the very standards Metropolitan Anthony used to condemn the 1848 Hungary invasion (cross-border invasion rather than defensive response to invasion of Russian territory, political and strategic objectives rather than existential defense of Orthodox faith), the Ukraine invasion follows the same pattern of governmental ambition that the Church cannot bless.
The invasion fails Metropolitan Anthony’s pattern.
Test Three: Does It Pass the “Lesser Evil” Requirement?
Metropolitan Anthony established that even when war might technically be permissible, it must pass an additional test: the harm from refusing to fight must demonstrably exceed the harm from fighting. “The only possible motive that could move a Christian heart in such extreme circumstances would be to avoid an evil of even greater magnitude.”
This is a burden of proof test. Show that refusing to fight would produce worse consequences than fighting.
The data makes this test impossible to pass.
The UN documented Donbas conflict deaths from 2014-2021.[10] The total was 14,200-14,400 deaths on all sides over eight years, including approximately 3,404 civilians. The trend was sharply declining. Approximately 90% of all deaths occurred in the first two years (2014-2015) during major combat operations. By 2021, the conflict had effectively frozen. The year 2021 saw only 25 civilian deaths, the lowest annual toll of the entire conflict.
March 2022, one month of Russia’s invasion, killed approximately 3,900 civilians. More than the entire eight-year Donbas civilian toll.
Even conservative estimates show the invasion has caused at least 17 times more total deaths than the entire eight-year conflict it claimed to prevent. Hundreds of thousands are dead: Russian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, civilians on all sides. The siege of Mariupol alone killed an estimated 25,000 civilians; Human Rights Watch documented at least 8,000 excess deaths beyond normal mortality rates. Entire residential areas were systematically destroyed.
One city reduced to rubble in the name of “protection.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which operated freely before February 2022 (as documented in Part VII), now faces systematic persecution. Churches seized, clergy arrested, Metropolitan Onuphry investigated. The invasion created the persecution it supposedly prevented.
When the so-called “protection” kills more people in one month than eight years of the threat you claim to defend against, when your intervention creates the persecution that didn’t exist before, when hundreds of thousands die to prevent what was already a declining conflict, this is catastrophic evil masquerading as protection, not the lesser evil.
The invasion thus fails the lesser evil test. Choosing to go to war was undoubtedly the greater evil, causing far more harm than if nothing had been done.
The Comprehensive Failure
The invasion of Ukraine does not meet a single criterion the Fathers established for blessing war. It fails St. Theodore’s test: this is Orthodox killing Orthodox, not defense against non-Orthodox persecution. It fails Metropolitan Anthony’s pattern: Russia initiated cross-border invasion, matching the governmental ambition he condemned. It fails the lesser evil test: the invasion has caused orders of magnitude more death than the declining conflict it claimed to prevent.
Not one criterion is met.
Common Defenses of the War Itself
The preceding tests measured the invasion against the Fathers’ criteria for permissible defense. It failed all of them. When the patristic case collapses, defenders of the war reach for broader arguments: historical precedents from Russian military history, a frequently misused quotation from St. Athanasius, and the appeal to Old Testament warfare. These arguments attempt to justify the war itself on independent grounds, unlike the defenses addressed in Chapter 16, which attempt to salvage Patriarch Kirill’s sin-washing sermon specifically.
The Battle of Kulikovo (1380)
Defenders of the current war often invoke St. Sergius of Radonezh’s blessing of Grand Prince Dimitri before the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. The argument runs: “St. Sergius blessed war, therefore we can bless war.”
No. This is exactly backwards.
First, examine what St. Sergius actually did. He did not eagerly bless the war at the outset. He urged Dimitri to seek every possible means of reconciliation first. Only when it was clear that the Tatar Khan would not relent, and that Orthodox Christians faced destruction if they did not resist, did Sergius give his blessing. The blessing came at the very end, as a last resort.
Second, examine who the enemy was. The Tatars were a foreign, non-Orthodox power that had subjugated Russian lands for generations.
Third, examine the nature of the war. The war was defensive: Russian Orthodox Christians resisting foreign domination. This fits precisely within the narrow window the Fathers allow.
Fourth, examine what St. Sergius did not do. He did not declare the war “holy.” He did not promise automatic absolution to those who died. He did not compose prayers for military victory to be read at every Liturgy. He did not defrock monks who expressed reservations.
Fifth, examine how the Church actually honored the fallen. After the battle, the Church established Demetrius Saturday (the Saturday before the feast of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, October 26) as a memorial service for all the soldiers who died at Kulikovo.[11] The Church honored their sacrifice liturgically through prayers for the departed, but it did not equate battlefield death with martyrdom. The fallen soldiers received commemoration and intercession, not canonization. This is the Orthodox pattern: we pray for the dead, we do not declare them automatically saved as Patriarch Kirill does.
The Kulikovo precedent, properly understood, condemns the current war in Ukraine rather than supporting it. St. Sergius blessed a defensive war against non-Orthodox foreign oppressors, reluctantly, after all other options had been exhausted.
Patriarch Kirill on the other hand, is blessing an aggressive war against Orthodox Christians, eagerly, while silencing anyone who objects. If we want to follow St. Sergius, we should be urging peace, not victory.
St. Alexander Nevsky
The same pattern holds for the most commonly invoked Russian military saint. St. Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes on the Neva in 1240 and the Teutonic Knights at Lake Peipus in 1242. The Church does honor him as “the saintly Soldier-Prince.” But even this saint, the single most prominent military figure in Russian Orthodox hagiography, received the monastic schema before his death in 1263, dying as the schema-monk Alexis at the monastery of Gorodets.[12] His hagiography gives equal weight to his diplomatic negotiations with the Mongol Khans, conducted with what it calls “the meekness of an angel and the wisdom of a snake,” as to his battlefield victories. His troparion addresses him not as a conqueror but as “Russian Joseph,” reigning “not in Egypt but in Heaven.” And the summary judgment of his life in the Orthodox tradition is that “his power was wholly devoted, and his life put to the service of the Russian Church.”
Those who invoke “Alexander Nevsky” as proof that the Church glorifies warriors are citing a saint who ended his life as a monk, whose liturgical title evokes a figure of mercy and forgiveness rather than military conquest, and whose hagiographic tradition insists that his wars served the Church rather than the state. Patriarch Kirill’s war theology inverts every one of these priorities.
”But the Church Blessed Past Russian Wars!”
The most common defense is historical: “The Church blessed Russia’s wars against Napoleon, against the Ottomans, and in the First World War. Therefore the current war must also be blessed.”
This crudely collapses all wars and their circumstances into a single category and ignores the criteria the Fathers and modern hierarchs actually used.
As demonstrated earlier in this chapter, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) did not bless wars indiscriminately. He defended wars that met the patristic criteria (1812, 1877, 1914) and condemned those that did not (1848). The fact that some past wars were genuinely defensive does not make all future wars defensive by default. Each conflict must be measured against the same criteria.
The invasion of Ukraine follows the pattern Metropolitan Anthony condemned, not the pattern he defended. It is a distortion of both history and theology to point to earlier defensive wars and assume that they automatically sanctify a war of aggression conducted under their borrowed halo.
The St. Athanasius Quote That Gets Constantly Misused
The next argument people resort to is a line attributed to St. Athanasius (sometimes via Augustine):
…it is not right to kill, yet in war it is lawful and praiseworthy to destroy the enemy.
— St. Athanasius the Great, Letter to Amun (c. 356 AD)
This quote from St. Athanasius is treated as if he sat down to write a theological blessing of wartime killing and called it “praiseworthy”, and then this quote is passed around as a kind of trump card: surely, if St. Athanasius says this, war must be justified.
There is one basic problem: the quote has been torn completely out of context.
Fr. John McGuckin has pointed this out very clearly. As he explains the original text is a letter to an Egyptian monk named Amun, who was asking whether nocturnal emissions were sinful. To say it plainly: the letter is about nocturnal emissions.
St. Athanasius brings in the “soldier in war” example as a passing illustration, to show that moral judgment depends on context and intention. His point is simple: just as we do not condemn a soldier for doing his duty in war, so we should not condemn a monk for an involuntary bodily event. He is arguing about how to understand responsibility, not about the morality of war.
Thus, this is simply an analogy, not a dogmatic statement about “holy killing.”
As McGuckin summarizes it, when this passage is quoted as if it were a justification of killing in war, it is simply being misused. St. Athanasius is not laying out a theology of just war. He is not blessing killing as a positive good. He is making a pastoral point about how we evaluate actions when the will is not fully engaged.
To use this line as a proof text for war is a textbook case of what this book has been warning about: sentences surgically extracted from the Fathers, stripped of their setting, and then used to support positions the Fathers were not even remotely talking about. The context is ignored, the actual subject of the letter is ignored, the Father’s intention is ignored, and then the saint is made to say what he never intended.
We never build Orthodox war theology on a single sentence from a saint, let alone a sentence lifted from a letter making an analogical comment about nocturnal emissions.
”But God Blessed War in the Old Testament!”
When every patristic defense fails, some reach for Scripture itself: “God blessed war in the Old Testament. He commanded the conquest of Canaan. Therefore He blesses war now.”
People have been trying to use the Old Testament to justify what their conscience condemns for centuries. Christ Himself addressed this pattern.
In Mark 10, the Pharisees questioned Him about divorce, “putting Him to the test.” They were not seeking truth but seeking justification. Christ’s response:
In view of your hard-heartedness he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
— Mark 10:5-6[13]
Old Testament permissions were accommodations to hardness of heart, not revelations of God’s perfect will. Christ came to reveal what was true “from the beginning.” The same principle applies to Old Testament war.
Notice the selectiveness of those who attempt appeal to Old Testament war, never appeal to God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. They would never use that passage to justify killing their own children (and rightly so). They cite only what serves their own agenda. This is Pharisaical testing, seeking to justify what the conscience already knows is wrong.
St. Theodore the Studite, whom we have already heard on the criteria for defensive war, faced this exact move in the ninth century and answered it directly. When someone tried to justify violence by appealing to Old Testament figures like Phinehas and Elijah, St. Theodore wrote:
We will not accept your unworthy impulses, even if you call upon Phinehas and Elijah ten thousand times; for the disciples, who were still devoid of the meek and good Spirit, were not pleased that Jesus obeyed such things. And the most divine Hierotheos tells us that we must teach with gentleness those who oppose the doctrine of God; for those who are ignorant must be instructed, not punished.
— St. Theodore the Studite, Letter to Theophilus of Ephesus[14]
In other words, the Old Testament examples do not give Christians permission to imitate Old Testament violence.
What does St. Theodore mean when he says, “the disciples… were not pleased that Jesus obeyed such things”? He is referring to the Gospel event where James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, just as Elijah had done. They asked Christ:
When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them, as Elijah did?’
— Luke 9:54[15]
Jesus refused and rebuked them. The disciples were disappointed that Christ would not follow the Elijah pattern. They wanted Him to repeat the Old Testament miracle of fiery judgment. He refused.
This is St. Theodore’s point: you can pile up Old Testament examples as much as you like, but Christ Himself came and explicitly refused to act according to that pattern. The disciples tried to invoke Elijah as a precedent. Christ answered them with a rebuke, not with approval. St. Theodore then explains why Old Testament examples do not bind Christians in this way:
For he is not ignorant either that ‘whatever the Law says, it says to those under the Law,’ nor of the comparison the Savior makes, saying: ‘It was said to the ancients this, but I say to you that.’
— St. Theodore the Studite, Letter to Theophilus of Ephesus[16]
The Law was given “to those under the Law.” Christ comes and reveals its true fulfillment: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you.”
God has revealed the ultimate intention that the Old Testament could only foreshadow in a limited and accommodated way. The Fathers consistently teach that many Old Testament commands were written according to human measure, as condescension to hardness of heart, not as the final revelation of divine perfection. St. Gregory of Nyssa in particular insists that the divine nature does not change, but that Scripture often records God speaking in ways suited to the weakness of those He is trying to lead. The Law was given as pedagogy, a first step for a violent people, not as a permanent manual for Christian behavior. The purpose was to move Israel one step closer to Christ, not to give baptized Christians a template for “holy war.”
We see this tension even inside the Old Testament itself. When David desires to build the temple, God answers:
You have shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a house for My name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight.
— 1 Chronicles 22:8[17]
Notice what is said here. David is not reproached for cowardice. He is not told he should have fought more. He is refused the honor of building the temple precisely because of the blood he has shed and the wars he has fought, even though that bloodshed took place inside the story of God’s people and God’s providence.
If even David, the Lord’s anointed, is held back from building the temple because of his wars, how much more should Christians tremble to claim that Old Testament wars give them warrant to bless modern campaigns, bombing cities and killing thousands?
To take Old Testament war texts and use them as a Christian justification for modern wars is to ignore Christ’s own teaching, to reject His explicit correction of the disciples who wanted to imitate Elijah, and to commit exactly the hermeneutical error the Fathers warn against. The Church reads the Old Testament through Christ, not Christ through the Old Testament.
Summary
Not one criterion is met. The invasion fails St. Theodore’s test: this is Orthodox killing Orthodox, not defense of εὐσέβεια against infidels. It fails Metropolitan Anthony’s pattern: Russia initiated cross-border aggression, matching the governmental ambition he condemned in 1848. It fails the lesser evil test: the invasion killed more civilians in one month than eight years of the conflict it claimed to prevent.
The Fathers permitted killing in war under exactly two conditions: chastity and true religion (σωφροσύνης καὶ εὐσεβείας). Even then, the soldiers’ hands were “not unstained by blood,” and they were barred from communion for three years. That was the best case: Orthodox Christians defending the faith against non-Orthodox aggressors, reluctantly, as a last resort.
What Patriarch Kirill has blessed is none of these things. It is an aggressive war against a fellow Orthodox nation, launched as a first resort, justified by political and territorial claims, and accompanied by promises that killing in this war washes away all sins. Every criterion the Fathers established has been inverted.
St. Nikolai Velimirovich states plainly where the blame falls:
The sins of the leaders of the people provoke war and defeat… Because of the sins and lawlessness of the God-fighting leaders of the people, the people themselves suffer, and their state, independence, and freedom perish.
— St. Nikolai Velimirovich, cited in Vasilevich, “Theme of War”
And on the moral responsibility of those who give the orders:
All the blame for the bloody deed is laid upon Herod, who gave the order, and not upon those who carried out the command. The Evangelist wishes to teach us as well: let us beware of doing evil even through other people.
— St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Conversations, cited in Vasilevich, “Theme of War”
The blame falls on the one who gave the order, not only on those who carried it out. Patriarch Kirill blessed and promoted this war. He composed the prayers. He defrocked those who refused. The next chapter documents what happens when this theology becomes institutional policy.
Original Greek: “«Τοὺς ἐν πολέμοις φόνους οἱ Πατέρες ἡμῶν ἐν τοῖς φόνοις οὐκ ἐλογίσαντο, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ συγγνώμην διδόντες τοῖς ὑπὲρ σωφροσύνης καὶ εὐσεβείας ἀμυνομένοις.»” ↩
St. Symeon of Thessaloniki, Against All Heresies, trans. Tikhon Pino (Patristic Nectar Publications, 2024), p. 16, footnote 5. ↩
Original Greek: “«Οἱ ἐν πολέμῳ φονεύοντες οὗτοι, ὑπερμαχοῦσι διὰ τὴν πίστιν καὶ τὴν τῆς σωφροσύνης φύλαξιν. Διότι, ἂν μίαν φορὰν οἱ Βάρβαροι καὶ ἄπιστοι κυριεύσουσιν, οὔτε εὐσέβεια θέλει μείνει, μὲ τὸ νὰ ἀθετοῦν αὐτὴν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ τὴν ἰδικήν των κακοπιστίαν στερεώνουσιν, οὔτε σωφροσύνη καὶ φύλαξις τῆς τιμῆς, μὲ τὸ νὰ ἀκολουθοῦν ἀπὸ αὐτοὺς πολλαὶ βίαι καὶ φθοραὶ εἰς νέας καὶ νέους.»” ↩
Original Greek: “«Ἐπιφέρει δὲ ὁ Ἅγιος καθεξῆς ἀπὸ λόγου του ὄχι Κανόνα ἀποφασιστικὸν, ἀλλὰ συμβουλευτικὸν καὶ διστακτικὸν, λέγων, ὅτι, ἀγκαλὰ καὶ οἱ ἐν πολέμῳ φονεύοντες οὗτοι ὡς φονεῖς δὲν ἐλογίσθησαν ἀπὸ τοὺς ἀρχαιοτέρους, ὅμως, ἐπειδὴ καὶ δὲν ἔχουσι καθαρὰς τὰς χεῖράς των ἀπὸ αἵματα, ἴσως εἶναι καλὸν νὰ ἀπέχουν τρεῖς χρόνους ἀπὸ τὴν κοινωνίαν μόνην τῶν Μυστηρίων, ἀλλ᾽ ὄχι δηλαδὴ καὶ νὰ ἐκβάλλωνται ἐκ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ὡς οἱ ἄλλοι μετανοοῦντες.»” ↩
Fr. John McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), p. 404. ↩
See Bishop Kallistos (Ware), The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1993), p. 75: “Before the battle of Kulikovo the leader of the Russian forces, Prince Dimitry Donskoy, went specially to Sergius to secure his blessing.” The hagiographic tradition consistently records that St. Sergius first urged Dimitri to seek peace and exhaust all diplomatic means before granting the blessing as a last resort. ↩
The 1917-1918 All-Russian Local Council elected the Patriarch by a three-stage process. In the popular vote, Metropolitan Anthony received the most votes (159 in the first round), but the Council selected three finalists and chose among them by drawing lots (жребий). St. Tikhon, who had the fewest votes of the three finalists, was selected by lot on November 5/18, 1917. The Council understood this as leaving the final choice to God’s providence. ↩
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, Report to the UN Human Rights Council, March 15, 2023 (A/HRC/52/62). The Commission found extensive evidence of Russian war crimes but no evidence supporting Russia’s allegations of genocide by Ukraine against Russian-speaking populations. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/iiciukraine/index. ↩
Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” President of Russia official website, July 12, 2021. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 (Russian original); English translation at http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181. The essay was published seven months before the February 2022 invasion. ↩
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “Conflict-related civilian casualties in Ukraine,” reports from 2014-2022. The OHCHR Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has published regular reports documenting civilian casualties. The 2021 figure of 25 civilian deaths appears in the January 27, 2022 report covering the period through December 31, 2021. Available at https://ukraine.un.org/en/168060-conflict-related-civilian-casualties-ukraine. ↩
Demetrius Saturday (Дмитриевская суббота), the Saturday before the feast of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki (October 26), was established by Grand Prince Dimitri Donskoy and St. Sergius of Radonezh as a memorial for those who fell at the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). The Church honored the fallen through prayers for the departed, not by declaring them martyrs. ↩
“Repose of Saint Alexander Nevsky,” Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2024/11/23/103377-repose-of-saint-alexander-nevsky ↩
Original Greek: “καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· πρὸς τὴν σκληροκαρδίαν ὑμῶν ἔγραψεν ὑμῖν τὴν ἐντολὴν ταύτην· ἀπὸ δὲ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτοὺς ὁ Θεός·” ↩
Original Greek: “«δεν θα αποδεχθούμε τις μη ζηλευτές παρορμήσεις σου, ακόμη κι αν μύριες φορές επικαλεσθείς τον Φινεές και τον Ηλία· στους μαθητές, που ήταν αμέτοχοι του πραέος και αγαθού Πνεύματος, δεν άρεσε που ο Ιησούς υπήκουε σ’ αυτά. Και ο θειότατος ιεροθέτης μάς λέγει ότι πρέπει με πραότητα να διδάσκουμε αυτούς που αντιτίθενται στη διδασκαλία του Θεού· διότι πρέπει όσοι είναι σε άγνοια να διδάσκονται και όχι να τιμωρούνται»” ↩
Original Greek: “ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ᾿Ιάκωβος καὶ ᾿Ιωάννης εἶπον· Κύριε, θέλεις εἴπωμεν πῦρ καταβῆναι ἀπὸ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἀναλῶσαι αὐτούς, ὡς καὶ ᾿Ηλίας ἐποίησε;” ↩
Original Greek: “«διότι δεν αγνοεί ούτε ότι όσα λέγει ο Νόμος τα λέγει για όσους υπόκεινται στο Νόμο, ούτε τη σύγκριση που κάνει ο Σωτήρ, στην οποία λέγει : «λέχθηκε στους αρχαίους τούτο, αλλ’ εγώ σάς λέγω εκείνο»” ↩
Original Greek: “Αἷμα εἰς πλῆθος ἐξέχεας καὶ πολέμους μεγάλους ἐποίησας· οὐκ οἰκοδομήσεις οἶκον τῷ ὀνόματί μου, ὅτι αἵματα πολλὰ ἐξέχεας ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐναντίον μου.” ↩