The Church has always been an important ideological tool, and religion is currently part of the hybrid warfare, ambassador Oleg Serebrian stated in IPN’s public debate “War, Religion and Church”. According to him, since ancient times, the Church has been politicized and used by the rulers of state entities to achieve their expansionist goals.
The writer noted that the world has always been haunted by wars and the peaceful periods are extremely rare and short. The relative peace in Europe after World War II was shaken by the armed conflicts in the post-Soviet space.
“Karl Schmidt said: “out of 5,000 years of history, there were 50,000 years of wars”. The only year in 20th century in which there were no military confrontations, the so-called “year of peace”, was the period of July 30, 1913, the armistice after the Second Balkan War, and July 28-29, 1914, the beginning of World War I. During the rest of the periods, even after 1945, Europe was safer from incidents, but the world was boiling with wars. The Cold War was a very hot confrontation. A confrontation between the two military blocs, through interfaces, the Americans and the Soviets. They fought from Nicaragua to Vietnam and from Korea to Angola. What happened in Yugoslavia in 1991-1995, in the post-Soviet space, including in the eastern districts of the Republic of Moldova in 1992, showed that stability can be a temporary thing in Europe as well,” said Oleg Serebrian.
According to him, since ancient times, the Russian Orthodox Church has played an important role in justifying Russian military aggression and promoting expansionist ideas.
“The Russian Orthodox Church has been quite politicized all the time and was an important ideological tool for Tsarist Russia, imperial Russia. Subsequently, in 1941, the German aggression against the USSR took place and Germany treated the Russian Orthodox Church with great openness. It was then that the Soviets saw that the church, the religion, could be a very important instrument and Stalin revised his position towards the Russian Orthodox Church in the autumn of 1941. A kind of revival of Orthodoxy took place. Khrushchev later returned with anti-religious campaigns. Vladimir Putin has highlighted the role of the church as a geopolitical tool. Religion has become a part of hybrid warfare. From history we know that the Church was a factor that went hand in hand with expansion and war,” explained the diplomat.
Oleg Serebrian pointed out that the war in Ukraine is an absolute evil, and Russia is using barbaric methods in the neighboring country, which have completely destroyed the concept of security on the European continent.
“Now, in Ukraine, we have a large-scale military confrontation and pre-war style aggression. The methods of carrying out this aggression surpass even those in the Balkans in 1992-1995,” said Oleg Serebrian.
The public debate entitled “War, Religion and Church” was the 315th installment of the project “Developing political culture through public debates”. IPN Agency implements the project with the support of the German Foundation “Hanns Seidel”.
