Ukraine-Russia conflict doesn’t stop at the church door

In Ukraine, religion is another battlefront in the conflict between pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine supporters. Special correspondent Kira Kay reports on the political pressures that have divided congregations. This report was produced in partnership with the Bureau for International Reporting.

KIRA KAY, Special Correspondent: St. Nicholas church is the center of life in the Ukrainian village of Butyn. It survived two world wars and the communist Soviet Union, that demolished many other churches around the country. But St. Nicholas has now become an unexpected battleground of beliefs, and even political influence, in Ukraine.

It used to belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the country’s largest denomination. It maintains a direct link to Russia’s own politically influential Orthodox Church.

But in Butyn and at least 30 other villages, residents have been throwing out their Moscow-affiliated priests. The process has sometimes been chaotic, even violent, and some communities have been left divided.

Ukrainians are marking a year of dramatic protests on Kiev’s main square, the Maidan; the overthrow of a pro-Russian president; the Russian annexation of Crimea; and now, a war in the country’s east against pro-Russian separatists, that has claimed 5,000 lives.

This turmoil impacts people’s faith, says Andrij Yurash of the government’s religious affairs office.

ANDRIJ YURASH: They can‘t accept their belonging to a church which is directly subordinated to Moscow. Which it now seems for an absolute majority of the people in the country is a visible, direct enemy.

KIRA KAY: In Butyn, the troubles started, villagers say, when the priest refused their requests to pray directly for the Maidan protestors.

SVETLANA EVGENIEVNA (through interpreter): That was my child there. They were students and children of other parents that were residents of our village. That was the last straw.

KIRA KAY: Svetlana Evgenievna and her neighbors felt they had to remove their priest.

SVETLANA EVGENIEVNA (through interpreter): There was a gathering of the village. There were shouts and quarrels, and we weren’t sure what to do. One man proposed a referendum, how many for and how many against?

KIRA KAY: Villagers voted to transition to the smaller, unofficial, but overtly pro-Ukrainian church, called the Kyiv Patriarchate. The church holds services in Ukrainian, not old Slavic, and has no ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. In October, a new priest arrived and pro-Kyiv parishioners, backed by ultra-nationalist activists, took over the grounds.

Butyn is a patriotic town in the heart of nationalist Western Ukraine. The town’s school holds fundraisers for troops fighting in the East, which include several local men.

This makes it hard for Moscow patriarchate holdouts, like Tamara Kaznovetska and Olga Tsimbaluk.

TAMARA KAZNOVETSKA (through interpreter): Someone told me: “You are a bandit. You are a separatist. You pray in the language of the aggressor. I was just going to church. I pray to God. I don’t pray to Putin.”

We are not against Ukraine. We are simply Christians who cannot leave our 1,000-year-old faith.

KIRA KAY: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited today’s Moscow Patriarchate from the main church in Russia.

In 1992, the rival Kyiv Patriarchate was established by a breakaway priest named Filaret, who felt Ukraine deserved its own church. Always much smaller and not recognized by official Orthodox leadership, the Kyiv Patriarchate grabbed last year’s political moment, joining protestors on the Maidan and then protecting them.

Eighteen-year-old Irina Kocubinskaya was injured when riot police attacked the Maidan protestors last November. But she managed to escape and fled with others to a nearby Kyiv Patriarchate monastery. In the weeks that followed, St. Michael’s became a sanctuary.

IRINA KOCUBINSKAYA (through interpreter): The church played not just an actual, but also a symbolic role. People remarked we were hiding here, just like they did from barbarians 1,000 years ago. That the priests here opened the doors, I think, is important, because the Moscow Patriarchate would hardly do the same.

KIRA KAY: The simmering perception that the Moscow Patriarchate is on the wrong side of history in Ukraine was too much for some priests, like Father Vitaly Eismonth.

FATHER VITALY EISMONTH, Kyiv Patriarchate (through interpreter): I was anxious. I thought the church would speak, but the church was silent. And when Russian forces intruded in the east, the church I was serving for 23 years, and was defending all this time, turned its back on its people. I couldn’t defend it anymore.

KIRA KAY: Eismonth defected to the Kyiv Patriarchate and joined a church 100 miles from home, subordinate to much younger priests. He says the sacrifice is worth it.

FATHER VITALY EISMONTH (through interpreter): People are awakening, and I think it’s only the beginning. And of course it’s alarming for the priests because their influence is not what they thought they had.

KIRA KAY: Kyiv Patriarch Filaret openly supports Ukraine’s political changes, even sending aid to the front lines. And he doesn’t pull any punches when talking about his rival church.

PATRIARCH FILARET, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate (through interpreter): In the Moscow Patriarchate, there are priests and bishops that are openly supporting Putin and calling our government a junta. And when people hear that, they want to leave.

KIRA KAY: Bishop Kliment is the spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate.

BISHOP KLIMENT, Spokesman, Moscow Patriarchate (through interpreter): This slander and informational filth has become a real propaganda war against our church that has escalated to the point where it destabilizes Ukraine.

KIRA KAY: Kliment says that, although his church is affiliated with Russia, it makes its own decisions.

BISHOP KLIMENT (through interpreter): We have both a political and military conflict in Ukraine, and some religious groups are using this to play some kind of card. Factually, what is happening is a raider seizure. They are unconstitutionally taking away the rights of people. They are opening a second front inside of Ukraine.

PATRIARCH FILARET (through interpreter): The Moscow Patriarchate reacts as if we are invading its churches. We are not invading. We are accepting parishes that want to switch.

KIRA KAY: One of the more contentious turnovers, which Bishop Kliment complained about to the Ukrainian Parliament, was in the village of Khodosy.

WOMAN: Putin, stop. No go now to Ukraine.

KIRA KAY: There was a vote here too, but the Moscow Patriarchate priest and his followers barricaded themselves inside, using a fire extinguisher to ward off the crowds that had gathered. Several people were injured, and local officials, like Ruslan Siviy, say they are not equipped to handle such chaos.

RUSLAN SIVIY, Region Administrator (through interpreter): By law, the government shouldn’t intervene into religious affairs. But, unfortunately, we can’t stay out of this, since the tensions are physical. Government officials locally and in Kiev should create mechanisms to satisfy the people, so that it will be easier for us to manage.

KIRA KAY: Ukraine’s church crisis is now drawing strong language from Moscow, the Kremlin labeling it a human rights violation, and President Putin himself deriding activists for their silence on the seizures that he calls a tragedy.

Ukraine is considered the birthplace of all Russian Orthodoxy. So not only is Russia’s influence now at stake, its religious identity is, too, says Andrij Yurash.

ANDRIJ YURASH: Without Ukraine, Moscow church cannot preserve itself in the position as the most influential contemporary Orthodox body in the family of all Orthodox churches. It will be the end of even this historical concept.

KIRA KAY: Back in Butyn, parishioners don’t see it that way and are embracing their new church.

NADIYA PARIY (through interpreter): Today, we are hearing a prayer for our dear Ukraine. We are a hearing prayer for our kids that died. We are hearing a prayer for those who are fighting for our freedom. That’s why I am enormously happy.

KIRA KAY: But the situation is not settled: the Moscow Patriarchate has appealed in regional court to get the Butyn church back.

For now, holdouts Tamara and Olga are journeying to another church in a nearby town, that has welcomed them and also their priest. It can be seen across the valley from the little blue church of St. Nicolas, an apt metaphor for the country’s religious rift.

This is Kira Kay in Western Ukraine.