Ukraine's Orthodoxy faces a schism of its own as it reels from political storm over Russian ties

The Ukrainian law banning the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine has opened a serious of questions about the Orthodox Christian church, nationalism, deception and propaganda.

Questions surrounding the state of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine and its links to the Kremlin have made it descend from the spiritual realm into a fierce political arena replete with malign influence, propaganda and deception, just like during the Soviet times.  

The political controversy that has been highlighted by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 came to the fore last August, when Kyiv enacted a bill set to restrict the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate. 

According to Ukrainian and Western security services, this branch of the Orthodox Church — to be differentiated from the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine — has been directly linked to the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence agency FSB,* maintaining the close collaboration between church and state in the Soviet Union.