¹ See, for example, the newspaper article by Cyril Hovorun, ‘L'idéologie du “monde russe” sous-tend la guerre en Ukraine’, Le Courrier d'Europe Centrale, 12 March 2022. The short newspaper article is an interview with Cyril Hovorun by Gwendal Piégais.

² The sermon of Patriarch Cyril is available at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5906442.html (accessed 18 January 2023).

³ Patriarch Cyril's critique of modern secular values dates from much earlier than 2022. See Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Freedom and Responsibility: A Search for Harmony – Human Rights and Personal Dignity. Selected Addresses by His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 2011)Google Scholar; Métropolite Cyrille de Smolensk et de Kalingrad, L’Évangile et la liberté. Les valeurs de la Tradition dans la société laïque (Paris: Cerf, 2006).

⁴ Patriarch Cyril urged soldiers not to be afraid of fighting in Ukraine during a sermon in Moscow on 21 September 2022. The sermon is partially available at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5961645.html (accessed 18 January 2023).

⁵ Such a comparison between Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the sacrifice of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine was made by Patriarch Cyril in a sermon on 25 September 2022. The sermon is available at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5962628.html (accessed 18 January 2023). Serhii Shumylo calls Patriarch Cyril's theology as ‘Orthodox Shahidism’. See Serhii Shumylo, ‘“Orthodox Shahidism” and Moscow Patriarch Kirill's Neo-Pagan Theology of War’, in Orthodox Times, 11 December 2022. Shymylo's article is available online at https://orthodoxtimes.com/orthodox-shahidism-and-moscow-patriarch-kirills-neo-pagan-theology-of-war/ (accessed 18 January 2023).

⁶ The 2018 decision of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is regarded by Moscow Patriarchate as an intrusion of the Patriarchate of Constantinople into the areas of Russian canonical and spiritual jurisdiction. For a detailed presentation of the 2018 event, see the following academic publications: Bremer, Thomas, Brüning, Alfons and Kizenko, Nadieszda (eds), Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022)Google Scholar; Denysenko, Nicholas E., ‘Explaining Ukrainian Autocephaly: Politics, History, Ecclesiology, and the Future’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 62/2–3 (2020), pp. 426–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bremer, Thomas, ‘Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda – Missed Opportunities, Lost Chances, Bad Options for the Moscow Patriarchate’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 62/2–3 (2020), pp. 443–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bordeianu, Radu, ‘The Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine: Its Impact Outside of Ukraine’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 62/2–3 (2020), pp. 452–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bremer, Thomas and Senyk, Sophie, ‘The Current Ecclesial Situation in Ukraine: Critical Remarks’, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 66/1 (2019), pp. 27–58Google Scholar.

⁷ The English version of the social document (hereafter SDMP) is available at https://mospatusa.com/files/THE-BASIS-OF-THE-SOCIAL-CONCEPT.pdf (accessed 18 January 2023). The French translation of the same document was published in 2007; see Église orthodoxe russe, Les fondements de la doctrine sociale (Paris: Cerf & Istina, 2007).

⁸ The quote is taken from the introductory paragraph of the social document.

⁹ For a detailed analysis of the social document and the many themes it engages, see, for example the following publications: Arola, Pauliina and Saarinen, Risto, ‘In Search of Sobornost and “New Symphony”: The Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church’, The Ecumenical Review 54/1 (2002), pp. 130–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoppe-Kondrikova, Olga, Kessel, Josephien van and van der Zweerde, Evert, ‘Christian Social Doctrine East and West: The Russian Orthodox Social Concept and the Roman Catholic Compendium Compared’, Religion, State & Society 41 (2013), pp. 199–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Novik, Venyamin, ‘Examen critique de quelques aspects du “document social” du Synode de Moscou’, Istina 45 (2000), pp. 255–63Google Scholar. See also the commentaries to the social document that were included in Thesing, Josef and Uertz, Rudolf (eds), Die Grundlagen der Sozialdoktrin der Russisch-Orthodoxen Kirche (Bonn: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2001)Google Scholar. In addition to chapters commenting on the social vision of the Russian Orthodox Church, this volume includes the German translation of the social document of the Moscow Patriarchate.

¹⁰ Agadjanian, Alexander, ‘The Social Vision of Russian Orthodoxy: Balancing between Identity and Relevance’, in Sutton, Jonathan and van den Bercken, William (eds), Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Europe (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), p. 164Google Scholar, n. 2.

¹¹ SDMP, §VIII.1.

¹² SDMP, §VIII.2.

¹³ SDMP, §VIII.2.

¹⁴ SDMP, §VIII.2; emphasis added.

¹⁵ Inga Leonova, ‘The Two Social Doctrines’, unpublished paper presented at the annual conference of the European Academy of Religion (EuARe), Bologna/Italy, 20–23 June 2022, p. 1. Leonova's short paper can be consulted at https://www.academia.edu/82898494/The_Two_Social_Doctrines (accessed 19 January 2023).

¹⁶ SDMP, §VIII.3. For an analysis of the notion of just war in western Christianity, see Patterson, Eric and Charles, J. Daryl, Just War and Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2022)Google Scholar; Reichberg, Gregory M., Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace (Cambridge: CUP, 2017)Google Scholar; Corey, David D. and Charles, J. Daryl, The Just War Tradition: An Introduction (Wilmington, NC: ISI Books, 2012)Google Scholar; Mattox, John J., St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London: Continuum, 2009)Google Scholar; Russell, Frederick H., The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1975)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ SDMP, §VIII.3.

¹⁸ SDMP, §VIII.4.

¹⁹ SDMP, §VIII.4.

²⁰ Leonova, ‘The Two Social Doctrines’, p. 2.

²¹ The English version of the 2022 declaration is available at https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/ (accessed 20 January 2023). The 2022 declaration has been translated into multiple languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, Estonian, Dutch, and Finnish. I will quote from the English version that was published by Brandon Gallaher and Pantelis Kalaitzidis in Mission Studies 39 (2022), pp. 269–76. The French translation of the declaration – Sur l'enseignement du ‘Monde russe’ – was published in 2022 in Istina 63/3 (2022), pp. 359–65. For a comprehensive introduction into the concept of Russkiy mir and its worldview, see the following publications: Kathy Rousselet, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russkii Mir’, in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations?, pp. 121–44; Hovorun, Cyril, the, ‘Interpreting “Russian World”’, in Krawchuk, Andrii and Bremer, Thomas (eds), Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 163–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shishkov, Andrey, ‘“Russkii mir”, Orthodoxy and War’, Theological Reflections: Eastern European Journal of Theology 20 (2023), pp. 63–78Google Scholar; Goodin, David G., ‘The Rise of the Third Rome: Russkii mir and the Rebirth of Christendom’, Journal of the Council for the Research on Religion 2 (2021), pp. 71–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Svetlana M. Aleinikova, ‘Russkii mir’. Belorusskii vzgliad: monografia [Russkii mir. A Belorusian View: A Monograph] (Minsk: RIVSh, 2017), pp. 8–9, n. 1.

²³ Rousselet, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russkii Mir’, pp. 122, 139.

²⁴ Patriarch Cyril, ‘Speech at the Plenary Session of the 20th International Educational Readings’. The speech is available at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5928249.html (accessed 20 January 2023).

²⁵ Hovorun, Cyril, ‘Russian Church and Ukrainian War’, The Expository Times 134 (2022), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Cyril Hovorun, ‘Esta es una guerra de la santa Rusia contra el impío Occidente’, La Vanguardia, 12 June 2022. See https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20220612/8324959/guerra-santa-rusia-occidente-impio.html (accessed 20 January 2023); Cyril Hovorun, ‘Russian World 2.0 and Putin's Spirituality’, Religion in Praxis, 26 February 2022. The article is available at https://religioninpraxis.com/russian-world-2-0-and-putins-spirituality/ (accessed 20 January 2023).

²⁷ Hovorun, ‘Interpreting the “Russian World”’, p. 164.

²⁸ Hovorun, ‘Russian Church and Ukrainian War’, p. 6; and Rousselet, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russkii Mir’, pp. 129–34.

²⁹ For an excellent analysis of Russia's embracing of traditional Christian values and its role in the global culture war that challenges the dominance of western liberal political order, see Uzlaner, Dimitry and Stoeckl, Kristina, The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022)Google Scholar. See also Stoeckl, Kristina, Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism (Leiden: Brill, 2020), especially pp. 47–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suslov, Mikhail and Uzlaner, Dimitry (eds), Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Rousselet, Kathy, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church and the Global World’, in Giordan, Giuseppe and Zinskrac, Sinisa (eds), Global Eastern Orthodoxy: Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (Cham: Springer, 2020), p. 41Google Scholar.

³¹ In his paper presented at the 2023 conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association (Volos, 11–15 January), Cyril Hovorun argued that the Russkiy mir is a heresy and compared its vision with that of the Pagan Graeco-Roman world. According to Hovorun, ‘both worlds seem to be dualistic and coercive, riding on the confusion between religion and politics’. He went on to argue that Irenaeus of Lyon defined these features as heresy: ‘These features had become embodied in the religious trends and movements which St Irenaeus and his like-minded contemporaries identified as heresies. In the same vein, I believe, we could approach the Russian world doctrine’. See Cyril Hovorun, ‘Is the “Russian World” Doctrine Condemnable?’, unpublished paper presented as part of the panel on ‘The Russian World’, chaired by Michael Hjälm. Hovorun's conference paper is available at https://www.academia.edu/94886791/Is_the_Russian_World_Condemnable (accessed 20 January 2023).

³² Gallaher, Brandon and Kalaitzidis, Pantelis, ‘A Declaration on the “Russian World” (Russkii mir) Teaching’, Mission Studies 39 (2022), p. 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Ibid., p. 273.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 274, 276.

³⁵ ‘Editorial: A Timer of Reckoning for the Church’, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 66/1–2 (2022), pp. 6–7.

³⁶ A broader comparison between the two social documents has been offered by Heta Hurskainen, ‘The Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Social Ethos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: A Comparison of Central Aspects’, in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations?, pp. 73–95.

³⁷ See David B. Hart and John Chryssavgis (eds), For the Life of the World: Towards A Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (hereafter FLOW) (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2020). The entire document is available online at https://www.goarch.org/social-ethos?fbclid=IwAR2RSPrgYRhPfAgT9p2iIQkd9wqtOYJ74Gtjnpmyq9xYdxshwqr6U1FJFiY (accessed 23 January 2023). The social document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has already attracted the attention of theologians of various Christian denominations. See, for example, the entire issue of Theology Today 78/4 (2022); Ecumenical Trends 49/5 (2020); and Studies in Christian Ethics 35/2 (2022). See, also, the article by Nikolaos Asproulis, ‘Doing Orthodox Political Theology Today. Insights from the Document For the Life of the World: Towards A Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Review of Ecumenical Studies 13/1 (2021), pp. 16–30.

³⁸ Chryssavgis, John, ‘Guest Editorial’, Theology Today 78/4 (2022), p. 344CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ FLOW, §42.

⁴⁰ FLOW, §43.

⁴¹ FLOW, §44.

⁴² FLOW, §45.

⁴³ FLOW, §45.

⁴⁴ FLOW, §46; emphasis added.

⁴⁵ The same argument is also used by Aristotle Papanikolaou in his article ‘The Ascetics of War: The Undoing and Redoing of Virtue’, in Perry T. Hamalis and Valerie A. Karras (eds), Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2017), pp. 13–35. Svetlana Alexievitch's book The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II (New York, Penguin, 2018), also speaks about devastating experience of those involved in war, which harms their own being, as well as their relationships with their fellow humans. The original version of this book was published in Russian in 1985.

⁴⁶ St. Basil of Caesarea, Canon 13, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. 162 vols. (Paris, 1857–1858), vol. 32:681C.

⁴⁷ FLOW, §47; emphasis added.

⁴⁸ Stanley Harakas, ‘No Just War in the Fathers’ (emphasis added). The short article is available at https://incommunion.org/2005/08/02/no-just-war-in-the-fathers/ (accessed 23 January 2023). See also Harakas, Stanley, ‘The Teaching on Peace in the Fathers’, in Bos, Hildo and Forest, Jim (eds), For the Peace from Above: An Orthodox Resource Book on War, Peace, and Nationalism (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2011), pp. 384–408Google Scholar. The article by Harakas was initially published in 1986. The French Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément is of the same opinion: ‘Historically, the Orthodox Church has accepted warfare sorrowfully as a sometimes-necessary evil, but without concealing that it is an evil which must be avoided or limited as much as possible’. Olivier Clément, ‘The Orthodox Church and Peace: Some Reflections’, in For the Peace from Above, p. 177.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ John A. McGuckin, ‘Nonviolence and Peace Traditions in Early and Eastern Christianity’, in For the Peace from Above, p. 429.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 440; emphasis added.

⁵² ‘Editorial: A Time of Reckoning for the Church’, p. 6.