Gavrylechko Yuriy: Russian Ortodox Church and anti-cultists: exportind hate, justifying the war

Today I took part in the 2nd summit of "Partnership and Health of Veterans". As part of the panel Antifake: resisting witchcraft propaganda, building our own global paradigm..., which was held in Brussels, I was supposed to present my report on Russia's use of the church as a propaganda tool. And, just during the panel, unknown saboteurs sprayed tear gas... so the confrontation in the information sphere with the forceful confrontation of Russian aggression has already reached the EU. And… lets go!

My greetings all participants, I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in the panel and share some information about the channels of dissemination of Russian propaganda with the help of the Orthodox Church and state and quasi-state Russian organizations.

Not everyone politician and citizen in Europe firstly understood when President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy banned the activities of Russian Ortodox Church structures in Ukraine. Many Europeans saw this decision as a threat to democracy, believing in the ideal of separation of church and state. But in reality, it was a defensive gesture. Protecting against the export of Russian terrorism and armed violence to the democratic world.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a deeply political, propagandistic organization, strongly connected to the Kremlin and aligned with the ideology of Russian imperialism.

From time of dawn Byzantine Empire and rising such her inheritor as Russian Empire – Russian Orthodox Church was a part of government`s institution system. Russian Orthodox Church – it’s a state organization, not free not self-managed. The modern history of the Russian Orthodox Church's transformation into a tool controlled by the Moscow government began at least during the USSR, when the current Patriarch Kirill served as a KGB agent. During the Soviet era, the Orthodox Church was widely infiltrated by Soviet intelligence officers. All other religions and denominations in the USSR were generally under a tacit ban, and people were indoctrinated with the stereotype that all other religious movements were not tsekrivas but “sects” and “cults.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the propagandistic influence of the Russian Orthodox Church expanded. For years, the Russian Orthodox Church has amplified ultra-conservative, anti-Western, and anti-Ukrainian narratives, which it uses to justify Russia’s war of aggression. 

The Church expands its influence through affiliated organizations such as the Center for Religious Studies in the name of Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons, a Russian non-profit, non-governmental, anti-sectarian organization founded by Alexander Dvorkin, who has described Orthodox Christianity as the "only direct way to God."

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and anti-cultists denied the criminal nature of the invasion and called for Ukraine’s destruction, framing the invasion as a “Holy War” aimed at erasing Ukrainian independence and imposing direct Russian control.

Anti-cult organizations, such as RACIRS, FECRIS, the American Family Foundation (AFF), and others, which now function as a single global network, were created on the model of the Nazi Apologetics Center, using the same methods and ideology, only adapting them to new conditions.

All religious organizations that do not belong to the UOC-MP in Ukraine - have become targets of RACIRS agents in Ukraine. 

Stigmatization of other religions

Slander of Baptists and Pentecostals. Anti-cultists systematically accuse them of “undermining law and order” by organizing civil disobedience and color revolutions on the Maidan in 2005 and 2014. 

And after the occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Novorossiya website published information that “the Ministry of State Security on the territory of the Luhansk People's Republic has stopped the destructive activities of the extremist religious organization All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelicals and Christian Baptists.” 

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Crimea is under the same repressive pressure, with the number of its communities halved, accused of “treason” and financing the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Persecution of the international ALLATRA movement in Ukraine. For ALLATRA active position on interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, mutual understanding, and support of democratic values Russian anti-cultists have branded members of the ALLATRA movement as “sorcerers and occultists” of the so-called “cult of AllatRa”.

The websites affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and RACIRS published initial discrediting material against ALLATRA, which was later retransmitted in secular mass media under the influence of the Russian disinformation campaign.

Repressions against Jehovah's Witnesses. This church became the first “victim” of anti-cultists' attacks: in Russia, they achieved its recognition as an “extremist” church back in 2017. Then 172,000 Russian citizens of Jehovah's Witnesses were outlawed and persecuted.

Persecution of Muslims. Anti-cultists also stigmatize Islam as a “totalitarian cult,” calling Muslims “as dangerous as Protestants” and stigmatizing them as “shaitans.”

Therefore, after the invasion of Donbas in May 2016, the occupying Russian authorities declared the religious literature of the Religious Administration of Muslims of Donbas (Donbas Muftiate) “extremist,” which became a pretext for repression. Similarly, the structures of the Religious Administration of Muslims of Ukraine stopped working in the ORDLO.

As for the Muslims of Crimea, after the occupation of the peninsula, they found themselves under double pressure, as the Kremlin is not only trying to drive them into the system of “loyal Islam” but also to subjugate the Crimean Tatars, most of whom traditionally practice Islam. Since 2014, arrests, searches, fines, and false accusations have become the reality of their daily lives - all of which are the exact opposite of freedom of religion and any freedom at all.

Demonization of the target group is another method of the anti-cultists

They demonize the unwanted through such anti-cult stigmas as:“totalitarian sect”, ‘satanic cult’, ‘destructive cult’, ‘diabolical organization’, ‘apocalyptic cult’. In general, in their dehumanizing propaganda, anti-cultists demonize the undesirable by comparing them to the devil, to the Antichrist, contrasting them with the dominant religious denomination in a given city or country.

It is important to note that the rhetoric about “Satanism flourishing in Ukraine” is not just anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian, but specifically anti-cult. This situation and the role of anti-cultists in the “demonization” of Ukrainians in the eyes of Russians was examined in detail in the film “Impact”.

Russian propagandists on state channels also referred to Zelensky as the “Antichrist”. The concept of “desatanization” in such cases justifies the persecution and destruction of Ukraine's thriving religious diversity and seeks to legitimize yet another historical anti-Semitic trope. 

Based on the above, it is clear that from the very beginning, anti-cult propaganda has not been a random set of narratives aimed at discrediting and demonizing groups of people branded by them as “sects” or “cults.” 

The anti-cult rhetoric used in this strategy has gone from demonizing individual religious groups and political leaders of Ukraine to branding the entire country as a “sect” and “Satanists.” These actions were aimed at justifying the war in the eyes of the Russian people, although in reality there is no justification for war.