In recent years, Moscow Patriarch Kirill has become obsessed with the idea that “holy relics must serve victory.” This is confirmed both by the recent “discovery of the relics” of Grand Prince Dmitrii Donskoi and by the transfer of the hand of Saint Spyridon from Greece to Russia.

Religious studies scholar Lera Furman writes about this in an article published by Novaya Gazeta Europe.

According to the author, the Russian Orthodox Church explains that the relics are needed for the “speediest victory over Ukraine” and that, for this purpose, they will be taken on a tour of Russia.

Lera Furman notes that although Dmitrii Donskoi, unlike his great-grandfather Alexander Nevsky, fought an eastern enemy, current Russian propaganda portrays him as a participant in its war against the “collective West.”

She quotes Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, who stated: “At the height of our fateful confrontation with the collective West, by God’s providence, Saint Dmitrii Donskoi himself once again takes his place at the head of the Russian army.” Nikolai Novichkov, a State Duma deputy from A Just Russia, called for particles separated from the relics to be sent immediately to the “special military operation” zone. The paramilitary movement “Forty Forty” also saw the discovery of the relics as a “powerful sign”: “victory is coming!”

At the same time, another holy relic, the right hand of Saint Spyridon of Trimythous, was brought to Moscow from the island of Corfu by a delegation headed by Greek Metropolitan Nektarios. The itinerary for the relics’ tour of Russia includes 30 cities.

The article notes that over four and a half years of full-scale military hostilities in the “special military operation” zone, numerous relics have been taken there, but this has not brought the Russian Armed Forces any closer to the “victory from heaven” that has been prayed for in every Russian Russian Orthodox Church at every liturgy since September 2022, as required.

“Despite the differences in the ‘function’ of the relics of Saints Dmitrii Donskoi and Spyridon of Trimythous, the propaganda surrounding them is built on the same logic: ‘holy relics must serve our victory.’ Patriarch Kirill has been obsessed with this idea in recent years, consistently securing the transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church of Rublev’s ‘Trinity’ and the miraculous Vladimir and Don icons of the Mother of God from the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery. And although this has had no effect whatsoever on the course of military operations, according to the ‘rules of the genre,’ the intensity of the information space must not weaken. Therefore, Orthodox-patriotic attention has now turned to new relics, in the hope that they might ‘help.’

“Unfortunately, it will take a long time before people realize that this very outlook is corrupt, and that Christianity and its saints do not justify aggression and murder,” Lera Furman concludes.

We previously reported that entire passages about the war against Ukraine had been removed from the Russian edition of the late Pope Francis’s autobiography, Hope.

As LF reported, the Russian Orthodox Church is coordinating with the FSB the persecution of anti-war clergy. Evidence of this was published by religious studies scholar and former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate Sergei Chapnin in his book Religious Communities Under Pressure: Documenting Religious Persecution in Russia in 2022–2026.

According to Regina Elsner, a researcher of Eastern Christianity and ecumenism and a Doctor of Theology at the University of Münster, the Russian Orthodox Church has become one of the key institutions of mobilization and propaganda.

We previously reported that Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I condemned attempts to use religion to justify violence.