"The Russian Church-State Compact " (see related A | B | C)

The Patriarchate of Moscow is subservient to the State (Mr. Putin). 

During the former Russian empire there never was a Russian Patriarchate. The czars avoided the possiblity of a Patriarch opposing their rules. The Moscow Patriarchate arose during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Following its repression during the Stalinist era, the Moscow Patriarchate was in fact re-established to boost the morale of the USSR troops fighting the Germans. Following WW2, the Moscow Patriarchate served as an arm of the KGB and presently continues its subservient role to the rulers of the Kremlin. In fact, the Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, elected in 1990, publicly confessed that his Church, and himself personally, engaged in such compromises (a euphemism that fails to stress that others lost their lives for their contributions to the Communist regime). Since its inception, the Moscow Patriarchate belonged to Orthodox Churches under the Constantinople Patriarchate. With the advent of Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate abandoned such union and became exclusively Russian. The title he claims "His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Serbs, Macedonians, among others, since Rus refers to populations and areas many centuries prior to the existence of Moscow). 

The current aim of the war Putin calls "special operation" is to resuscitate the "Holy Russian Empire" by uniting "the Slavic people" in Europe imitating Hitler's dream to reunite the "Folks Deusch" people across Europe that triggered WWII. In this aim, Putin is aided by a substantial number of Slovaks, Serbs, Moldavians, and Byelorussians, and sadly also many of the "Russian-speakers" in Ukraine. Also sadly European and US experts seem to be ignorant and unaware that the ongoing war may be a prolegomenon to WWIII. Most of these experts are graduates of "Russian Programs" and Russian preceptors or those whom they trained. Such programs included Russian views on Ukraine. A symptom of such ignorance is a stigmatic speech delivered by President Bush Senior correctly branded as the "Chicken-Kiev" command like for Ukrainians to submit to Russia, instead of declaring their independence voted for 98% of the population. The speech was written by the then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, current professor in Stanford, where the "Russian Program" is prominent and the "Ukrainian Program" does not exist. Their graduates are those that probably oppose the assistance to Ukraine by the US to retain its freedom from Russian imperialism. The Ukrainian language is already forbidden in the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

In Ukraine, the clergy subject to the Moscow Patriarchate, often native Russians refusing to speak Ukrainian, have demonstrably engaged in promotion of political aims dictated by the Kremlin. Ukrainian "pro" Russian Presidents granted the Moscow Patriarchate many historical churches and not so to the Ukrainian Orthodox churches adherent to the Constantinople Patriarchate.

The Moscow Orthodox Church beatified Czar Nicholas II as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, also referred to as Saint Nicholas the Martyr. Such gestures bridge seek "forgive and forget" in an effort to consolidate the legacies (and crimes) of czars, Bolsheviks who murdered the Imperial Family, Stalinists holocausts including the starvation of millions of Ukrainians and crimes such as those associated with Chornobyl by those who followed them.