Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Kirill on a mission

Is it the Orthodox Church that Putin is using in his new diplomacy?

For the uninitiated, ‘Patriarch’ Kirill, the newly elected Patriarch in Russia, is alleged to have been and to still be a KGB agent. He has been very successful and influential in diplomatic issues, more regional than global. He succeeded to lay down the foundation of Orthodox Church in Cuba and Venezuela, where he is alleged to have secret political dialogues with top level diplomats like Fidel Castro. He is also one of the richest Russians in Russia with a personal wealth over $4 billion. Compare that with the Pope: rich, yes; millionaire, surely; but billionaire? (Even the Vatican operates on a budget deficit these days; one guesses after the billions of dollars payouts globally on child abuse cases).

Moreover, Russian neighbours including Ukraine are not ready to accept Russia’s presence and domination in their territory. On a key multiple tier diplomatic level, Russia desperately needs to keep its existence and influence in the neighbouring states for its economic benefit and to retain supremacy. Thus, as it has exhausted all possible options, PM Vladimir Putin is now all set to launch another contrivance to resolve political and diplomatic issues with its neighbours – the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin is trying to use the Orthodox Church quite cleverly, with the recent visit of Patriarch Kirill to Ukraine evidence of the same. Analytically, the 10-day visit of Kirill to various churches in Kiev and other cities of Ukraine might not seem very successful at the political level on the face of it, but it seems to have laid down a strong positive foundation in the minds of the common Ukrainians with respect to acceptability of anything Russian.


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