by Stefano Caprio

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.

The autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) held a Synod of Bishops on 14 July to celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the 1,037th anniversary of the Baptism of “Kyivan-Ukraine Rus’,” according to the new title given in 2008 to the founding event of Christianity on the banks of the Dnipro River, with the Baptism imposed on the entire population by Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr) the Great, Ravno-Apostol'skiy (Равно-Апостольский), “equal to the apostles”.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself emphasised the union of the terms Rus’ and Ukraine, to recall “the history that formed our state, uniting dozens of successive generations of our people.”

The formulation obviously seems forced, as the term ukraina began to be used only in the 17th century to designate the "border" lands of the rebellious Cossack communities, who later joined the empire of the Tsars of Moscow to free themselves from the yoke of the Polish kings.

On the other hand, even the fusion of Rus’ and Russia, while semantically more logical, has no real historical justification, as there was no formal “transition” event between the ancient state of the Kyivan principalities and the new "Holy Russia" of Moscow after the two centuries of Tatar-Mongol yoke, between the 13th and 15th centuries, which the Russians themselves simply called "Muscovy."

Ultimately, Rus’ is a mythological term with no specific ethnicity, and Rossiya – Russia – rather suggests a broadening of integration with other peoples, Caucasians and Asians, Finno-Ugric and Uralic, so much so that Ukrainians accuse Russians of having lost the "Russic purity" that only they retain in their lineage from ancient Kyiv, despite being themselves mixed with various other ethnic groups.

The ethnocultural disputes between Kyiv and Moscow are precisely the distinctive features of this thousand-year history, considering that in the first three centuries, Moscow did not exist, having only begun to assert itself after 1300 thanks to agreements with the Tatars. And, for over three centuries, Kyiv no longer existed, razed to the ground by the Mongols in 1240 and only reborn at the end of the 16th century.

Immediately after the death of Prince Vladimir in 1015, his sons fought over the succession, in that perennial sequence of internal conflicts also remembered in Slavic liturgy as the mezhdousobnya brani (Междоусобная брань), the "fratricidal strife" for which they continually asked the Lord for forgiveness.

In 1169, Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky destroyed Kyiv for the first time to “save” it from the invasion of his Asian Bogomil enemies, and moved the capital of the "grand prince" to the innermost city of Vladimir, the birthplace of Moscow itself, inaugurating the "replacement" of the centre of Rus' that continues to this day, from Kyiv to Moscow, to Saint Petersburg back to Moscow, and today once again in the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow.

For these reasons, the interpretation of history stands out as one of the determining factors of the conflict, expressing two opposing models of human masses scattered across the immense territory that unites East and West, Europe and Asia, without ever managing to fully dominate it, being too few in numbers and too undecided in their true orientation.

Every distortion due to local and universal wars only serves to reiterate this great ambiguity, which concerns the two peoples heirs to the Baptism of Kyiv, and along with them other Slavic, Finnish, Latin, Germanic, Nordic, Asian peoples, and many other variants of the artificial continental division of Eurasia, where there is no true border, no geographical, historical, cultural, or even religious Ukraina.

Ukrainians therefore celebrate the Baptism on the day dedicated to Vladimir's death, 15 July according to the Gregorian calendar, which in Russia falls on 28 July according to the Julian calendar, which the Russians retained in opposition to the Latins and which the Ukrainians rejected in 2024, distancing themselves from this as well due to their relations with the West.

The Synod of the autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops therefore insists on the concept of Ukraine as a “free and democratic country, respecting freedom of conscience and religious profession for all,” in which the divine commandments were revealed to the people “not only to repeat them by heart, but to put them into practice every day in the lives, choices, and actions of each individual,” and this goes back to “the sources and roots of our independent state, all the way to the Principality of Kyiv.”

In light of this, “the Russian Empire is trying to distort the true historical significance of Rus’ as an ancient Ukrainian state, and is mendaciously and baselessly trying to attribute it to itself," the bishops say, calling for “reaffirming the choice made over a thousand years ago by our ancestors, proclaiming Ukraine as a true European state.”

The document approved by the Synod also explicitly criticises the concept of the "Russian world," calling it lzheucheniye (лжеучение), a "false doctrine" based on "heretical principles of ethno-phyletism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism." It also invokes the dogmas of the Council of Nicaea to "restore the fullness of the Church of Christ and to expose, reject, and condemn this new heretical and murderous teaching of the Russian world”. Hence, “we call on all those who have been poisoned by it to repent and correct themselves.”

Metropolitan Epiphanius (Dumenko) of Kyiv, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, also emphasised the importance of Prince Vladimir's choice “in favour of faith, truth, culture, and European civilisation, which is the foundation of Ukrainian identity, of our nation and our state, which our enemy is trying to destroy... Like a thousand years ago, our strength lies in unity, sacrifice, and love for our people.”

The fact that they are effectively the only Orthodox Church left to preserve the Julian calendar will therefore allow Russians, in a few days, to celebrate the Baptism while boasting about their resistance to Western depravity and heresy. Isolation in this sense is the aspect in which Russia best defines its concept of "Orthodoxy," not so much as an affirmation of the dogmas of the "true faith" (in this it would have little to distinguish itself from), but rather as the last bastion against all "heterodox" people, pravoslavnye (православные, Orthodox) versus inoslavnye (инославные, foreigners), which truly distinguishes the Russian identity from the Ukrainian one, which indeed presents itself as an identity of inclusion, not separation.

Men of “other faiths”, called by the even more derogatory term inovertsy (иноверцы, Infidels), are generally the "foreign agents" cursed and persecuted in Putin's Russia.

The English poet and diplomat Giles Fletcher arrived in Muscovy in 1588 (six centuries after the Baptism of Kyiv) on a trade mission, and left behind important historical and cultural notes, recording his astonishment at the rigid isolation of the Russian world from the principles of civilisation that were increasingly spreading across Europe, even exporting them to the nascent Anglo-Saxon Empire across the ocean.

He observed that “very few people learn to read and write,” and any foreigner “coming from an educated nation” was forbidden to enter Muscovy except for strictly commercial reasons.

In 1589, the year the Patriarchate of Moscow was proclaimed the "Third Rome," an imperial decree required all foreign merchants to reside in isolated neighbourhoods, outside the capital, to prevent them from “bringing them other customs and properties, such as those accustomed to them in their own countries.”

Even the delegation from Constantinople, led by Patriarch Jeremias II , was locked up for seven months in the golden Kremlin Palace, and only after signing the decree establishing the Muscovite Patriarchate were they allowed to leave the country, without having any contact with the capital's population.

The Greeks then stopped among the Russians of the Kingdom of Poland, suggesting they form a true “counterpart” to Muscovite claims. This led to the proclamation of the Union of Brest of the Orthodox of Poland with the Pope of Rome in 1596, which can be considered – this time rightfully – the birth of Ukraine, in harmony with Latin European civilisation and in opposition to the universal claims of its Muscovite compatriots.

This began the conflict that lasted through much of the 17th century until the "eternal peace" of 1686 with the return of Kyiv to the imperial and patriarchal power of Moscow, the "mother war" of Russia’s current "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Fletcher noted during his visit that the rejection of foreigners was intended to “better maintain people in their condition of slavery, so that they would not have the opportunity or even the strength of mind to open themselves to some other vision of the world and of life.”

Shortly after the wars of the Troubles, at the end of the 17th century, the young emperor Peter the Great instead sought to turn against this segregation, beginning his reign with the “Grand Embassy” to Europe, visiting the countries of the north as far as the England of William III of Orange, the first sovereign to cede part of his powers to the parliament established in the House of Lords.

Peter opened the "window to Europe," bringing Western customs and traditions that were reflected in his new capital, Saint Petersburg, spreading the "deadly sins" of smoking and vodka throughout Russia, which led the most extreme Orthodox to condemn him as the much-feared "Antichrist."

However, when his most faithful assistant, Ivan Mazepa, dreamed of proclaiming an independent Ukraine with the support of the Poles and the Swedes, Peter responded by destroying the enemy armies in the eastern Ukrainian region of Poltava. Peter’s victory in 1709 earned him Russians’ forgiveness for his sins of Westernism, establishing the "Order of Judah" for Mazepa.

A thousand or more years have passed since the birth of Kievan Rus', but everything continues to repeat itself in the same way in all the princely, imperial, Soviet or Putinite sauces, each time in an even more grotesque variant than the previous one.

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• ukraine
• russia
• Kyivan rus’
• anniversary
• conversion
• vladimir
• volodymir
• putin