Kiev has ordered the pro-Russian UOC to sever all ties with the Moscow Patriarchate by 18 August. It currently has around 10,000 parishes, a number now equivalent to that of the autocephalous Orthodox Church. Defending Metropolitan Onufryj - who has always maintained a balance between rejecting war and maintaining ties with the Russian Church - is Larisa Brodetskaja, a veteran of the Ukrainian armed forces in the resistance against Moscow's troops.
Kyiv just celebrated the anniversary of Prince Vladimir’s Baptism with a Synod that condemned the ideology of the “Russian world”. Conversely, in a few days, the Julian calendar will allow the Russians to celebrate it alone, boasting about their resistance to Western depravity and heresy, in that isolation that is the aspect that best defines the concept of “Orthodoxy” in Moscow today.
Two years after Prigožin's death, Russian mercenaries remain in the field as employees of the Ministry of Defence. They are strongly committed to supporting political propaganda throughout Africa, even offering special courses for African journalists with programmes on Russian television networks and agencies.
An alternative to the Kerch Bridge, which is constantly under attack by Ukrainian drones, the road and rail link between the peninsula and the Donetsk region is taking on an increasingly strategic role. This opens up not only immediate prospects, but also long-term ones.
Moscow has become the first government to complete the normalisation of relations with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Since 2018, Russian policy towards the Taliban had begun to change, moving from formal opposition to an evident search for cooperation. But the new friendship with Kabul will develop in the usual style of mutual suspicion and cross-checking
Looking back at Russia's past and present history and reality, Patriarch Kirill condemns those who ‘call for the purity of Islam or Orthodoxy,’ because ‘we may have different cultures and traditions, but we are one people.’ Meanwhile, in the Moscow neighbourhood of Kommunalka, a multi-religious centre is being presented where an Orthodox church, a synagogue, a mosque and a Buddhist temple are to be built in a shared space.
