Orthodox Church Helps Russia Expand Influence Operations

The role of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church in Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions is the sub­ject of a 02 Sep­tem­ber 2025 report from the Eura­sia Dai­ly Mon­i­tor. The report out­lines how the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, despite shrink­ing at home, is aid­ing the Krem­lin by pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al val­ues and expand­ing Russ­ian influ­ence abroad. The arti­cle begins:

For the past decade, the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church of the Moscow Patri­ar­chate (ROC MP) has been shrink­ing. The Ortho­dox Church of Ukraine (OCU) achieved offi­cial auto­cephaly in 2019, the Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Church (UOC) dis­tanced itself from the ROC in 2022, and many oth­er post-Sovi­et nation­al branch­es of Ortho­dox church­es are tak­ing steps to sep­a­rate from Moscow (see EDM, Feb­ru­ary 13, 2024). At home, few­er Rus­sians fol­low the ROC MP’s pre­cepts or attend its ser­vices (The Moscow Times, August 1). These loss­es have been so large that the Moscow Patri­ar­chate risks becom­ing a small nation­al church sub­ject to com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er Ortho­dox and Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions with­in Russia.

Read more: Jamestown Foun­da­tion – Eura­sia Dai­ly Monitor

Key Points

• The Moscow Patri­ar­chate faces domes­tic decline as Ortho­dox church­es in Ukraine and else­where dis­tance them­selves from Moscow.
• Despite loss­es, Patri­arch Kir­ill strength­ens ties with the Krem­lin by pro­mot­ing Ortho­doxy and tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian values.
• The church plays a grow­ing role in spread­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in Africa and beyond through reli­gious outreach.
• A new align­ment with nation­al­ist groups like the Russ­ian Com­mu­ni­ty risks bind­ing the Krem­lin clos­er to rad­i­cal forces.

Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church Dri­ves Krem­lin Influ­ence Oper­a­tions in Europe

The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, far from being mere­ly a spir­i­tu­al insti­tu­tion, has become a cor­ner­stone of Krem­lin strat­e­gy for pro­ject­ing soft pow­er, shap­ing nar­ra­tives, and exert­ing covert influ­ence across Europe. In the Baltic states, Moscow sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tar­gets Russ­ian-speak­ing minori­ties, using both social media chan­nels and cul­tur­al plat­forms to inject divi­sive nar­ra­tives and exploit eth­nic iden­ti­ties, while offi­cial church net­works ampli­fy Krem­lin-aligned mes­sag­ing about tra­di­tion­al val­ues and civ­i­liza­tion­al strug­gle against the West.

The Church’s insti­tu­tion­al­ized alliance with the Russ­ian state is overt: Patri­arch Kir­ill open­ly bless­es Russia’s mil­i­tary cam­paigns, fram­ing them as a holy defense against per­ceived West­ern deca­dence, and church lead­er­ship col­lab­o­rates with Russ­ian embassies and intel­li­gence ser­vices to recruit assets and gath­er infor­ma­tion. This fusion of reli­gious and polit­i­cal objec­tives is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in Esto­nia, where local law­mak­ers moved deci­sive­ly to require the Eston­ian Ortho­dox Church to sev­er ties with the Moscow Patri­ar­chate—a direct response to the Church’s doc­u­ment­ed role in pro­mot­ing pro-Krem­lin sen­ti­ment, under­min­ing nation­al cohe­sion, and serv­ing as a con­duit for broad­er Russ­ian influ­ence operations.

Togeth­er, these efforts reveal a cal­cu­lat­ed, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al cam­paign that lever­ages reli­gious author­i­ty, dias­po­ra net­works, and hybrid tac­tics to advance Russ­ian geopo­lit­i­cal aims.

External References

1. Rus­si­a’s use of reli­gion for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es and intel­li­gence operations
2. Esto­nia pass­es law tar­get­ing Moscow-linked church ties
3. The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church: Ide­ol­o­gy, Pol­i­tics, and War

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.