The Role of the Religious Factor in the Russia–Ukraine Conflict before 2022 from the Perspective of Relations between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate

Abstract

This article aims to verify the hypothesis on the influence and significance of the religious factor in the Russia–Ukraine conflict from the perspective of relations between the main Orthodox churches in Ukraine: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). Considering the quantitative indicators, Ukraine is not a country particularly predestined to be a party to a religious conflict – be it an objective or an identity type. At the same time, social behaviour indicates an increase in religiously motivated social hostility, the further escalation of which is highly probable due to the Russian aggression on Ukraine. Believers from both Churches indicated non-religious and non-ethnic issues as the main causes of the conflict between the Orthodox churches. The purely political nature of the conflict between the churches was emphasised, refl ecting the political and military conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. To sum up, based on the research results, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the religious factor was a current and significant, but not the leading, conflict factor in the Russia–Ukraine war in 2021 from the perspective of religious relations in Ukraine. The UOC-PM is predestined to the role of a declining church, playing a progressively less important role in religious relations in Ukraine for political, identity and demographic reasons. At the same time, the OCU is undoubtedly destined – also under the conditions of the ongoing war – to play a leading role in the process of consolidating Ukrainian national and state identity.