Kirill, who as Patriarch of Moscow leads the Russian Orthodox Church in both Russia and a number of neighboring countries, regularly endorses Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine and saw to it that his internationally respected second-in-command, Metropolitan Hilarion, was dispatched to a backwater post after failing to support the war. Like his predecessor Aleksi II, Kirill was also a KGB agent during the Soviet era.
Now his Moscow Patriarchate is spreading its wings by expanding to Africa — and engaging in worrisome activities in northern Norway. As always with the Russian Orthodox Church, separation between church and state is virtually non-existent.
This can be seen in northern Norway, where Russian Orthodox priests seem more focused on geopolitics than spiritual matters. The sudden burst of provocative clergy-led events coincides with rising Russian and Chinese rivalry with the West in the High North, as climate change opens new shipping routes.
Recent meetings of Norwegian and Russian officials about the area have been increasingly marred by Russian table-thumping and menacing references to the fate of Ukraine.
So in August, Arctic-watchers took note when Bishop Iyakov of Narayan-Mar and Mezen, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in the High North, turned up in Pyramiden, the northernmost town on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which sits at a key strategic position halfway between the country’s northernmost tip and the North Pole.
Russia has had rights in Svalbard since Norway took control in 1920. During Soviet times, it built Pyramiden as a model Soviet town providing everything its Soviet residents might need; as the Barents Observer points out, it was even home to the world’s northernmost kindergarten and primary school. Pyramiden was, however, disbanded two decades ago and has been a ghost town ever since.
The bishop — who has made a name for himself by blessing all manner of Arctic locations — arrived and erected a giant cross. Not only did he lack permission from the Norwegian authorities; but he also saw to it that the cross was decorated with the black-and-orange ribbon that that has come to symbolize Russian expansionism.
The following month, Iyakov was at it again, erecting a cross in Russia’s Franz Josef Land, this time accompanied by “soldiers from the nearby military base, as well as members of a delegation from the Russian Geographical Society,” the Barents Observer reported.
To be sure, because Franz Josef Land belonged to Russia, Iyakov had every right to erect a cross there. But his deliberate association with the Russian military suggests the cross on Svalbard also has a decidedly non-Christian function.
As Ragnhild Tvergrov Skare, a researcher at the Norwegian think tank UTSYN, noted: “When Putin returned to [presidential] power in 2012, the understanding of history became more politicized and was used as an important pillar in a new nation-building project. At the same time, the scope of the [Russian Orthodox] church’s activities in Norway increased. Several crosses, monuments, and initiatives have been started in collaboration with or by the Russian Orthodox Church in Norway.”
In recent years, these activities have intensified. In 2020, Bishop Mitrofan of Murmansk and Monchegorsk — the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church on the heavily militarized Kola Peninsula — set the tone, telling an interviewer that the far-north Norwegian municipality of Sør-Varanger “is our Orthodox land,” and then declared that he wanted to build an Orthodox church there.
Since then, Mitrofan, Iyakov, and other clerics have regularly turned up in Norway’s far north or opined about it. They are, in essence, demonstrating that Russian representatives can meddle in another country’s affairs, even a NATO member state. (The Barents Observer’s indefatigable reporters keep track of Orthodox and all other news in the High North, and I also commend Tvergrov Skare’s article.)
None of this comes as much surprise to anyone following the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia’s Christians have suffered a miserable fate over the decades: during Soviet times, they spent decades being persecuted even as some of their leaders secretly collaborated with the regime.
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, matters hardly improved. To be sure, Russia’s new leadership (especially Vladimir Putin, once he came to power) enthusiastically endorsed the Orthodox Church and even built churches and cathedrals for it, but the church leadership’s unhealthy proximity to the Kremlin remained as close in public as it had been in private.
Kirill, who became Patriarch of Moscow and thus leader of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2009, turned the relationship from close to intimate. That has continued since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, which Kirill hasn’t just accepted but endorsed. Russia has “the right to stand on the side of light, on the side of God’s truth”, he declared the day after the invasion, and he’s remained steadfast in his support of it ever since.
In recent months, it has gone much further by extending ambitious foreign operations in Norway and also in Africa; both very obviously helpful to the Kremlin. The Moscow Patriarchate has embarked on an extraordinary expansion campaign in Africa, poaching priests from the Patriarchate of Alexandria (which covers the continent and has supported the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s effort to separate itself from Moscow.)
The Russian church’s expansion in Africa is taking place in conjunction with the development of Russia’s klepto-military campaign on the continent through the re-purposed and now state-controlled Wagner Group, now known as the Africa Corps.
One could, of course, argue that they’re well-meaning but naïve priests who don’t realize that their activities can be seen in a geopolitical light. After all, all kinds of religious representatives travel to other countries to preach their respective gospel.
Then again, nobody becomes a Russian Orthodox bishop without understanding the connection between their denomination and the Kremlin. Hilarion, who has a doctorate from Oxford and is an internationally respected theologian, walked a fine line by stressing spiritual matters over political ones. But that was not enough. With Hilarion dismissed, there’s not a single leading Russian Orthodox priest who puts spirituality first.
That doesn’t mean Norway or any other country should ban Russian Orthodox priests, let alone Russian Orthodox believers. But it does mean always remembering that the Russian Orthodox Church is not just any religious denomination: it’s an arm of the Russian government.
Elisabeth Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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