Reporter’s Notebook: Ukrainian spiritual leader says Russian Orthodox Church extension of Kremlin

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Fox News Chief Religion Correspondent Lauren Green interviews His eminence Metropolitan Yevstratiy

His eminence Metropolitan Yevstratiy, the Deputy Head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s External Church Relations on Lauren Green’s Lighthouse Faith pdocast.

As President Donald Trump’s administration works toward a diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine, the leaders of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) are warning that Vladimir Putin’s Russia believes it’s actually fighting a “holy war” against the West.

A delegation from the OCU was in the United States recently for the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C. The group was led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Epiphany, leader of Kyiv and all of Ukraine.

His translator spoke to Fox News about the spiritual war raging between Russia and Ukraine, which has played a big role in why the battle began and continues to escalate.

HEAD OF EASTERN ORTHODOXY CONDEMNS PUTIN, RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Easter Orthodox service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral, April 16, 2023 in Moscow. (Contributor/Getty Images)

His eminence Metropolitan Yevstratiy, the deputy head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s external church relations, says of Russia, “From the point of religious view, this is a liberation of Ukrainians from [the] Godless West, from the evil. And Russia brings to Ukraine the light and truth.”

Yevstratiy, and other church watchers like Catholic intellectual George Weigel, have accused the Russian Orthodox Church of being nothing more than an arm of the Kremlin, dressed in religious vestments but doing Putin’s bidding.

Writing in the magazine First Things, Weigel noted “… Ukraine mounted and sustained a fierce resistance that denied Russia the quick victory Putin anticipated in February 2022, Russian justifications for the war began to take on a new coloration: The war was now a crusade in defense of Christian civilization.”

On Lighthouse Faith podcast, Yevstratiy recalled how at the start of the war, Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill sermonized to Russian soldiers fighting against Ukraine that if they die in battle they would immediately go to paradise… all sins forgiven. Even to an outsider looking at the complexity of Orthodox Christianity, that sounds more like ‘Political Jihad’ than the Gospel.

In 2019, Ukraine’s Orthodox Church was granted independence from the Russian Orthodox Church by the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). It caused an uproar in Moscow. Kirill and Putin refused to recognize the authority of Patriarch Bartholomew.

‘PUTIN’S CONFESSOR’ NAMED BISHOP OF ANNEXED UKRAINIAN TERRITORY

Metropolitan Epiphanius conducts the liturgical service and the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called consecration on Aug. 25, 2024, in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. (Andrii Nesterenko/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Yevstratiy also revealed a scarier version of the war in Ukraine. He says Putin’s ultimate goal is more than the reunification of the Soviet Union, or the defense of Christian civilization. It’s actually more apocalyptic. He’s focused on ushering in the third and final Rome…. in Moscow, which means, labeling the rest of Christianity, Catholics and Protestants alike… as heretics and pagans.

Describing the inner workings of the Orthodox churches may seem a little like ‘inside baseball’.  But these are the oldest churches of Christianity. They emerged from the five ancient churches led by the apostles who knew Jesus personally.

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill conducts the Easter service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow on Saturday, April 23. (Sergei Vlasov, Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)

The apostle Andrew went to the east in Constantinople; Mark to Alexandria (Egypt); Peter to Antioch (Rome); James to Jerusalem, and Barnabas to Cyprus.  From these men, along with the itinerant Apostle Paul, Christianity spread throughout the globe. So, this conflict between Russia and Ukraine has deep spiritual roots. And Putin knows it.

Yestratiy and Epiphany were present at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. and heard President Trump declare his desire to be a peacemaker.

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Vestratiy said, “We pray and we ask God Almighty to bless this very good and Christian desire.”

Adding, “May God bless Ukraine. May God bless America.”

The full interview is on Lauren Green’s Lighthouse Faith podcast, available on Apple, Spotify and here.

Lauren Green currently serves as Fox News Channel’s (FNC) chief religion correspondent based in the New York bureau. She joined FNC in 1996. Her new book is “Lighthouse Faith: God as a Living Reality in a World Immersed in Fog.” She is host of Fox News Digital’s “Spirited Debate.”