Again, as I have said elsewhere, “greater Russia” is not a Russian Orthodox dream; the largest religion in Ukraine and the canonical Eastern Orthodox Church therein is already the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onuphrius, an autonomous church under the umbrella, or to use the exact Eastern Orthodox term of art, omophorion, of the Moscow Patriarchate.
There is no solid proof Putin is even Russian Orthodox. The only religious belief we know he subscribed to was atheism, a prerequisite for membership in the Communist Party of the USSR, and only the most reliable and well connected Communists would be considered for a job as important as a Colonel in the KGB in charge of the critically important Berlin station during the even more critically important and uncertain period as Erich Honnecker’s dictatorship in the DDR wavered and then collapsed spectacularly in 1989, and the process of German reunification was initiated, events of vital significance to Soviet interests.
Literally all we know about Putin’s religion at present is that he attends the Divine Liturgy at St. Savior’s Cathedral and certain other extremely high profile churches on Christmas, Easter and special occasions. Which frankly is not enough to either prove or disprove his Eastern Orthodoxy, since one can put on a show of piety, but it is not my place to judge his faith.
However, what this means is that your speculation about Putin’s alleged “Russian Orthodox Dream” is pure speculation.
Categorically not! Let’s consider a few facts:
- There are in Russia actually three Russian Orthodox Churches, including two Old Believer jurisdictions, alongside the Moscow Patriarchate, which also operates a number of Old Rite parishes.
- A substantial number of clergy in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate have criticized the war without reprisal, and neither Patriarch Kyrill nor anyone else has made any unambiguous statement of support for the war.
- Likewise, in the wake of prior Russian military confrontation with Georgia, which resulted in the formation of the schismatic South Ossetian and Abkhazian Orthodox Churches, the Moscow Patriarchate has refused to recognize them, insisting they belong to the canonical territory of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
- In the US, aside from a mere handful of parishes in the “Patriarchal Diocese” that are part of the Moscow Patriarchate, a majority of Russian Orthodox churches including all of those in Alaska, which was originally evangelized by the Russian church before the United States acquired it in the 1860s, are part of the Orthodox Church in America, which was granted autocephaly (complete independence) by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1970, and which also has Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Ruthenian, and ethnically mixed, as well as mainly convert parishes.
- The second largest Russian Orthodox church in the US is the autonomous Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Most international parishes, including nearly all outside of Europe and the US, such as those in Africa and South America, are part of this church, as the name implies. Like OCA, it is also highly ethnically diverse, with large numbers of American converts, and converts in the UK and other countries, and also large numbers of Ukrainian members.
- The Moscow Patriarchate itself is extremely multi-ethnic, hosting a vast array of nationalities in Russia such as Karelians, Siberians, Tatars, Altaics, and indeed migrants from other former Eastern Block countries including Germans, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Moldovans, Romanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarussians, Georgians, and indeed, Ukrainians, in large numbers, and is the umbrella for not only the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church but the canonical Orthodox Churches of Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, Japan, China, and Korea, as well as the principal Christian church in the Muslim majority Central Asian republics formerly part of the USSR, and has successfully evangelized and continues to evangelize Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks, and the Kyrgyz people to the fullest extent possible under their often oppressive regimes.
- The Moscow Patriarchate maintains a Department of External Church Relations headed by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, to manage ecumenical relations with other churches within and outside the Eastern Orthodox Communion. These include particularly close relations with the OCA, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Church of Greece and the Church of Cyprus.
- Outside of the Eastern Orthodox Communion, the Moscow Patriarchate enjoys very good relations with the Roman Catholic Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, and the Anglican Communion, particularly the Church of England.
- The Moscow Patriarch depended on Billy Graham to help it maintain the faith in the Soviet Union when preaching and catechesis were restricted and prohibited respectively, for he, due to his celebrity status, was able miraculously to get permission from the Soviet authorities to preach publicly, something the Moscow Patriarchate could only dream of, and on each of his trips to the USSR Billy Graham obtained a blessing from the Patriarch to preach. The attitude of the Moscow Patriarchate has been one of extreme gratitude aforementioned Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev visited Billy Graham repeatedly in his elder years, including on his deathbed.
- Finally, and most importantly, racism is officially condemned in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the heresy of ethnophyletism, as the notorious neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach found out when he was excommunicated shortly after joining the Antiochian Orthodox Church, when the parish priest Fr. Peter Jon Gilquist discovered he was a racist. He further infuriated Orthodox Christians around the world by sacrilegiously attacking another racist using an Eastern Orthodox cross. The full details of his excommunication and subsequent sacrilege are in this article.
In conclusion, as I have said before, the greatest number of victims of this terrible conflict are associated with the Moscow Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome, for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, are the largest Christian denominations among their respective peoples. This gives the conflict a horrific, fratricidal dimension which horrifies the Eastern Orthodox community.