The imperial-Russian ideology is being promoted among the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate through systemic manipulation — hostile narratives, pseudo-prophecies, and a mechanism of negative selection within the church hierarchy. This was stated by Metropolitan Yevstratiy Zoria, spokesperson of the Kyiv Metropolis of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, speaking in Kyiv at the roundtable “(Un)Holy War: How the Moscow Patriarchate Lies about ‘Religious Persecution’ and Supports Kremlin Agents in Ukraine,” held at the Media Center Ukraine.

According to Metropolitan Yevstratiy, senior leadership within the Moscow Patriarchate has for decades been shaped under the direct influence of Soviet and later Russian security services.

“Since Soviet times, four to five generations of leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate have passed through a ‘KGB filter,’ where those most loyal to the security apparatus were the ones promoted through the hierarchy and appointed to leading positions both in the centre and in the regions,” — he noted.

The metropolitan also drew attention to the biographical background of Metropolitan Onufriy, the current head of the Ukrainian branch of the Moscow Patriarchate. He stressed that Onufriy’s formation as a cleric took place in the 1970s in Zagorsk, near Moscow — at the time, the only functioning monastery regularly used by the Soviet authorities to showcase religious life to foreign delegations.

Metropolitan Yevstratiy emphasised that the ideology of the “Russian world” constitutes a form of spiritual and political subjugation that stands in direct contradiction to individual and societal freedom:

“The ideology of the ‘Russian world’ is a form of spiritual and political slavery from which society must free itself.”

According to the OCU hierarch, this ideological framework explains the persistence of pro-Russian narratives within the Moscow Patriarchate’s structure in Ukraine, as well as its continued ability to function as a conduit for Russian state influence.