Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said today from Vilnius, Lithuania, that the Russian Orthodox Church bears a share of responsibility for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Bartholomew’s comments are a rebuke to Russian Patriarch Kirill, whose blessing for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has caused friction.

Bartholomew, who angered Moscow in 2019 by granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said the Russian authorities were using the church as a “tool to achieve their strategic goals.”

“Church and state leadership in Russia cooperated in the crime of aggression and share responsibility for crimes committed as a result of aggression, such as the shocking kidnapping of Ukrainians,” he said at a conference held in the Lithuanian parliament.

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, charging him with a war crime related to the illegal deportation of hundreds of Ukrainians. Russia claims that the children were taken out of Ukraine for their own safety. He denies committing human rights violations in Ukraine.

“Interfaith dialogue should be aimed at countering and neutralizing the ability of the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate to undermine unity and theologically legitimize criminal behavior,” Bartholomew emphasized.

The Russian Orthodox Church did not immediately comment.

The Ecumenical Patriarch is considered “first among equals” in the Orthodox Church, which has 260 million believers worldwide, of which about 100 million are in Russia.

“The Mother Church of Istanbul is once again ready to help its children in Ukraine and Russia, as it has done so many times in the past,” he said.

“Our common Christian duty is to use the forces of dialogue to bring our Russian brothers and sisters back into our community of shared values,” he added, emphasizing the need for “spiritual revival” in both Russia and Ukraine.

At the end of January, the Ecumenical Patriarch stated that the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine had no direct or indirect relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As he then stated, the Russian Church is artificially linking the war with the Ukrainian Autocephaly in order to cover up its duties and its great ambitions.

“It was she who deepened the gulf between Ukrainians and Russians, and not Ukrainian autocephaly, which was given to the trying Ukrainian people. The Russian reaction stems from an attempt to impose on the Ukrainian people and the lack of a healthy church conscience,” he said.

In fact, he pointed out then that the Church of Constantinople extended a helping hand to Russia to solve the Ukrainian problem, but the efforts turned out to be fruitless, due to the fault of the Russian side, which, however, does not recognize this.

Source: APE-MPE, Reuters.