Also at Stake in Ukraine: the Future of Two Orthodox Churches
KYIV, Ukraine — Standing in the cobblestone courtyard of a medieval monastery, with an icy wind whipping his black robes and artillery shells booming in the distance, Archbishop Yefrem is tormented by the war that is slowly engulfing his city.
But while Ukraine’s government is calling on every able-bodied male to defend the country against the Russian invasion, the archbishop sees things a little differently. Because Russians and Ukrainians are one people with one religion, he said, the Russian army is not an enemy. Believers in Ukraine should “pray for peace, not for victory.”
Launched by President Vladimir V. Putin to reassert Russian influence in the region, the war in Ukraine is also a contest for the future of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
The Russian church — of which Archbishop Yefrem is a part — has made no secret of its desire to unite the branches under a single patriarch in Moscow, which would allow it to control the holiest sites of Orthodoxy in the Slavic world and millions of believers in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for its part, has been slowly asserting itself under its own patriarch, reviving a separate and independent branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, after the independence of Ukraine in 1991.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/world/europe/russia-ukraine-orthodox-church.html
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