Publication

The recent visit to Ukraine paid by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill confirms that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is intensifying steps aimed at unifying Orthodoxy in the post-Soviet area, also through strengthening the links of the hierarchy and believers with Patriarch Kirill himself. The present policy of the new head of the ROC is in line with the general objectives of Russian foreign policy, constituting a crucial element of Russia’s public diplomacy towards CIS states, but the external priorities of the Orthodox Church and of the Russian state are likely to clash in the future.