The Russian Orthodox Church should be banned in its current form, and all of its senior leadership should be put on trial.

This was stated in an interview with Freedom by Russian opposition politician and leader of the international movement “Speak Louder!” Andrey Sidelnikov.

According to him, the church in Russia today “is a criminal cog in Putin’s fascist machine.”

“The Russian Orthodox Church is a criminal organization. It should not simply be banned in its current form. The entire senior leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church should be put on trial,” Sidelnikov said.

He recalled that the Russian Orthodox Church has been a subdivision of the former Committee for State Security since Soviet times, and that the current Patriarch Kirill is a KGB agent.

“It is public information that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church is simply a former KGB agent. Today, accordingly, he has moved into the status of an agent of other Russian intelligence services,” the politician said.

He stressed that after a change of regime in Russia, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church must bear its share of responsibility and “receive full retribution for everything it has done all these years.”

As LF reported, the Russian Orthodox Church coordinates with the FSB in the persecution of anti-war clergy. Evidence of this was published by religious scholar and former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate Sergey 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 at the University of Münster and a doctor of theology, the Russian Orthodox Church has become one of the key institutions of mobilization and propaganda.

Earlier, we reported that Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I condemned attempts to use religion to justify violence.