Russia Recruits Moldovan Priests: Kremlin Election Plot Exposed

Father Mihai Bicu, a priest in the Ortho­dox Church in Moldo­va, board­ed the flight back home from Moscow with his head spin­ning from the unfa­mil­iar atten­tion lav­ished on him. The 39-year-old and his par­ty of a few dozen Moldovan cler­gy­men had spent the pre­vi­ous week on an all-expens­es-paid tour of some of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church’s holi­est sites in Sep­tem­ber last year, Bicu told Reuters. They were giv­en vouch­ers worth 10,000 rou­bles ($120) by Russ­ian Ortho­dox offi­cials to spend in church shops that sell icons and sou­venirs, he said. They were also treat­ed to a series of lec­tures from the­olo­gians and his­to­ri­ans that stressed Rus­sia and for­mer Sovi­et state Moldo­va were bound by cen­turies of tra­di­tion and a shared faith and must stick togeth­er against a moral­ly cor­rupt West, the priest added. Before they flew home, Bicu said he and many oth­ers in his group received deb­it cards issued by a Russ­ian state bank which were hand­ed to them in a monastery by non-church peo­ple whom he could­n’t iden­ti­fy. They were told mon­ey would be trans­ferred to them soon after they returned to Moldova.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/holy-war-how-russia-recruited-orthodox-priests-sway-moldovas-voters-2025–09-26/

Key Points

• Sev­er­al hun­dred Moldovan Ortho­dox priests and lay cler­gy accept­ed all-expens­es-paid trips to Moscow between June and Octo­ber 2024, receiv­ing deb­it cards loaded with approx­i­mate­ly $1,200 upon their return home.
• Almost 90 new Telegram chan­nels were estab­lished as Moldovan Ortho­dox parish accounts over the past year, pump­ing out iden­ti­cal con­tent warn­ing against Euro­pean inte­gra­tion and pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al val­ues over what they call “gay Europe.”
• Facial recog­ni­tion analy­sis of videos iden­ti­fied three Russ­ian polit­i­cal oper­a­tives linked to Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s Unit­ed Rus­sia par­ty among the hosts of Moldovan priests dur­ing four pil­grim­ages last year.
• Moldova’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er called the scheme “the most immoral fea­ture of Russ­ian elec­toral inter­fer­ence,” accus­ing the Krem­lin of exploit­ing the coun­try’s most trust­ed insti­tu­tion to influ­ence Sun­day’s cru­cial par­lia­men­tary elections.

The Russian Orthodox Church: A Vehicle For Russian Influence Operations

The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church under the Moscow Patri­ar­chate has evolved into a cen­tral instru­ment of Russ­ian state influ­ence oper­a­tions, oper­at­ing well beyond its reli­gious man­date to advance Krem­lin inter­ests glob­al­ly. Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices recruit agents from among cler­gy and parish­ioners, uti­liz­ing church net­works as cov­er for espi­onage across Europe and the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to declas­si­fied archives, Patri­arch Kir­ill him­self worked for both the KGB and its suc­ces­sor, the FSB. Church­es are strate­gi­cal­ly posi­tioned near sen­si­tive infra­struc­ture through­out NATO coun­tries, includ­ing nuclear plants, air­ports, and mil­i­tary bases. In Swe­den’s Västerås, a church was built just 300 meters from Stock­holm-Västerås Air­port with a 22-meter spire that vio­lat­ed local zon­ing restric­tions lim­it­ing height to 10 meters. The parish priest, Father Pavel Makarenko, was lat­er con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed account­ing fraud for sub­mit­ting fake bills to Russ­ian and Belaru­sian com­pa­nies. The FBI has inves­ti­gat­ed ROC cler­gy for recruit­ing intel­li­gence assets among Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ties on Amer­i­can soil, reveal­ing the glob­al scope of these operations.

Beyond espi­onage, the Church pro­motes the “Russkiy Mir” or “Russ­ian World” doc­trine, which posits a transna­tion­al civ­i­liza­tion under Moscow’s spir­i­tu­al author­i­ty. Patri­arch Kir­ill lever­ages teach­ings on tra­di­tion­al val­ues to por­tray Rus­sia as a moral bul­wark against West­ern deca­dence, fram­ing the con­flict in explic­it­ly reli­gious terms. Dur­ing a March 2024 World Russ­ian Peo­ple’s Coun­cil con­gress head­ed by Kir­ill, the Church issued a remark­able decree call­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine a “Holy War” and declar­ing that “the entire ter­ri­to­ry of mod­ern Ukraine should enter Rus­si­a’s exclu­sive zone of influ­ence.” The 3,000-word doc­u­ment men­tions Rus­sia 53 times and posi­tions the inva­sion as a spir­i­tu­al strug­gle against the West, which it accus­es of hav­ing “fall­en into Satanism.” This nar­ra­tive has proven attrac­tive beyond Rus­si­a’s bor­ders, draw­ing young male con­verts in the Unit­ed States who reject mod­ern Amer­i­can cul­ture in favor of what they per­ceive as authen­tic mas­cu­line spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Ortho­dox Chris­tians are now 64% male, up dra­mat­i­cal­ly from 46% in 2007, reflect­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal appeal of this movement.

The ROC engages direct­ly in hybrid war­fare and patri­ot­ic indoc­tri­na­tion, with Patri­arch Kir­ill telling Russ­ian sol­diers in Sep­tem­ber 2022 that “sac­ri­fice in the course of car­ry­ing out your mil­i­tary duty wash­es away all sins.” In occu­pied regions of Ukraine, ROC cler­gy have passed troop loca­tions to Russ­ian forces and active­ly sup­port­ed the occu­pa­tion, demon­strat­ing that the Church’s role extends far beyond rhetoric. Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have respond­ed with increas­ing alarm. Bul­gar­ia expelled Archi­man­drite Vass­ian Zmeev for his involve­ment in “var­i­ous ele­ments of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion’s hybrid strat­e­gy to pur­pose­ful­ly influ­ence socio-polit­i­cal process­es” in favor of Russ­ian geopo­lit­i­cal inter­ests. When the Russ­ian Patri­arch accused Bul­gar­i­an author­i­ties of Satanism in response, Prime Min­is­ter Niko­lai Denkov fired back point­ed­ly: “Russ­ian priests were not expelled, only peo­ple who worked against the nation­al inter­ests of Bul­gar­ia.” Sim­i­lar­ly, Esto­nia passed leg­is­la­tion requir­ing its Ortho­dox Church to sev­er Moscow Patri­ar­chate ties, while the Ser­bian Ortho­dox Church con­tin­ues to serve as a cru­cial inter­me­di­ary between Moscow and Balkan lead­ers when tra­di­tion­al diplo­mat­ic chan­nels prove insufficient.

Exter­nal References:
• Atlantic Coun­cil: Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church declares “Holy War” against Ukraine and West
• CEPA: Pray­ing for Putin: Spies in Cas­socks Threat­en the West
• Euronews: (Un)orthodox intel­li­gence oper­a­tions: How Rus­sia is using its church­es abroad

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