Kirill claims Russia is ‘spiritual adversary’ of the West

At a Christmas service, President Vladimir Putin described the Russian army as ‘warriors’ carrying out a ‘holy mission’ to defend Russia.

Russia is the “spiritual adversary of the Western civilisation”, the Patriarch of Moscow said as he marked Orthodox Christmas.

“We do not accept what is currently accepted in the West under the slogan of ‘human rights,’ but which is in fact aimed at destroying human morality,” said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in a television interview on 7 January, Christmas Day according to the Julian calendar.

“There are concepts that are related to the very ability and possibility of the state to exist. Here around these ideas, these concepts, there must necessarily be a public consensus. If someone falls out of this consensus, there is such a definition: a traitor to the Motherland with all the legal consequences that follow.”

President Vladimir Putin attended a Christmas service at the Church of St George the Victorious near Moscow alongside military personnel and their families. After the midnight service, he described the Russian army as “warriors” carrying out a “holy mission” in defending Russia.

“Russia’s warriors have always, as if at the Lord’s behest, carried out this mission of defending the Fatherland and its people, saving the Motherland and its people,” Putin said. “At all times in Russia, this is how people have regarded their warriors, as those who, as if at the Lord’s behest, carry out this holy mission.”

Despite numerous calls for a Christmas ceasefire, including from Pope Leo, Russia used the Oreshnik hypersonic missile for the second time since the war began, attacking Ukraine’s western Lviv region overnight, about 40 miles from the Polish border.

According to the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, a separate overnight ballistic missile and drone attack left parts of Kyiv without water supply, with half the buildings lacking heating, amid wintery conditions and temperatures below freezing. 

The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), historically tied to Moscow, prayed for an end to war in his Christmas address on 7 January.

“For the fourth year in a row now, we meet the Nativity of Christ, a feast of God’s peace and good will, hearing the sounds of deadly shots, and we sincerely pray to the Lord to pacify the hearts of those who are waging war against us,” Metropolitan Onufry said.

The UOC still celebrates Christmas by the Julian calendar while other Eastern Churches in Ukraine have aligned their celebrations with the Gregorian calendar since the Russian invasion.

Celebrating the Epiphany on 6 January, the head of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) travelled to Istanbul to meet the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The visit marked the seventh anniversary of the OCU’s recognition as autocephalous by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

In a social media post, Metropolitan Epifany described the granting of the tomos, a decree of formal independence, to the OCU in 2019 as an act of historical justice for Ukrainians which “affirmed the restoration of the Church’s dignity after centuries of dependence and even hostile oppression”.

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