VLADIMIR PUTIN, KYRILL AND THE VATICAN
There are many who see in Patriarch Kyrill’s reluctance to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, evidence of Caesaropapism. Certainly, it is likely that Patriarch Kyrill sees Putin’s “special military operation” as regrettable, but necessary in order to restore the divinely ordained unity of the Russian people - a unity undermined by the emergence of a western-oriented, independent Ukraine, right at the very epicentre from which ancient, Christian Rus emerged.
