Russia’s military invasion has clearly exposed the hypocrisy of those representatives of the Russian Church who purported to care about Orthodox believers in Ukraine.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew made the remarks in an interview with Books’ Journal, according to Orthodox Times.

Patriarch Bartholomew criticised the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church for describing the war as “holy”.

“They called this war ‘holy’, attempted to justify it on theological and metaphysical grounds, and blessed the weapons being used against the Ukrainian people – the very people they had called their brothers before the invasion, yet sought to keep forcibly in a state of spiritual dependence, or more precisely, to subordinate to the ideology of the ‘Russian world’,” the Patriarch said.

The Ecumenical Patriarch also expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people and the country’s Orthodox believers, referring to destroyed churches, those killed in the war, the missing and refugees.

“We stand alongside our Ukrainian brothers. We pray for peace and justice to prevail and for an end to this unholy war,” he said.

As LF previously reported, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service accused Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of being “the devil incarnate” and the “Antichrist”, claiming that he had “cast his evil eye” on the Baltic states in an attempt to “drive out Russian Orthodoxy” and establish “puppet structures” with the support of British intelligence services.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew stated that he was not intimidated by the vicious Russian slander directed against him and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, adding that it was the Russians who should fear Judgement Day, if they still believed in God.