A Religious Studies Scholar Spoke About The Russian Orthodox Church's Cooperation With The FSB
- 12.08.2026, 14:23
The Russian Orthodox Church and the intelligence services are conducting coordinated media campaigns.
The Russian Orthodox Church is coordinating with the FSB to persecute anti-war clergy, writes Sergei Chapnin, a religious studies scholar and former editor of the *Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate*, in his book *Religious Communities Under Pressure: Documenting Religious Persecution in Russia, 2022–2026,” published in English, reports “Agency”.
High-profile cases demonstrate “striking patterns of operational coordination between state and church authorities,” writes Chapnin.
First, the sharing of evidence: in some cases, evidence gathered by state agencies—wiretaps of phone conversations and intercepted messages—appeared verbatim in the records of church courts.
Second, the church and the FSB conduct coordinated media campaigns: state-controlled media and church news services consistently publish virtually identical accounts of events involving persecuted clergy, using the same arguments to discredit them.
Third, in many regions, FSB officers personally visited local bishops to discuss clergy members who had taken or might take an anti-war stance.
After the war in Ukraine began, the FSB significantly expanded its monitoring of communications at the parish level, social media groups, and correspondence among believers, which allowed it to identify dissent at an early stage, writes Chapnin.
The story of Archpriest Sergei Rybakov, former rector of the Church of St. Tatiana the Martyr at Samara University, illustrates the FSB’s interference in church activities. He spoke out against the war on social media. In March 2023, Metropolitan Sergiy of Samara and Novokuybyshevsk warned Rybakov that he was under FSB surveillance, as Rybakov himself recounted. As a result, in September 2023, he was suspended from ministry.
In 2023, details emerged about documents from an FBI investigation, some of which were found on the laptop of Dmitry Petrovsky, an employee of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for External Church Relations. Their contents were revealed by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, who had received a copy of the FBI’s warning to American Orthodox communities. The materials, partially extracted from Petrovsky’s laptop, included a confidential 2009 memorandum indicating that one of Patriarch Kirill’s first initiatives upon taking office was to restore cooperation with Russian intelligence agencies.
Among other things, the declassified memorandum authorized “coordination with the FSB’s counterintelligence service.” According to the FBI’s assessment as outlined by Chapnin, Russian intelligence agencies use representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church as intermediaries to establish contacts with potentially valuable targets in the United States. The document states that “only the patriarch’s blessing” is required to involve representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in operational work, and that a “special headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church” coordinates interactions with law enforcement agencies, Chapnin writes.
The case of Sretensky Theological Seminary graduates Denis Popovich and Nikita Ivanovich served as evidence of the FSB’s involvement in fabricating cases. Both are ethnic Ukrainians, and Popovich holds Ukrainian citizenship. In 2025, they were accused of plotting an assassination attempt on Metropolitan Tikhon. However, the campaign to discredit them began as early as the fall of 2022—at that time, the Telegram channel “Bishop Lucifer” published a series of posts against them. Chapnin identified the channel as linked to representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate and the FSB.
Context. According to Chapnin’s estimates, since the start of the war, the authorities have secured at least 35 convictions against religious figures and believers, and at least three more criminal cases were under investigation as of June 2026. At least 30 administrative cases have been filed for “discrediting” the army. Thirteen religious leaders, activists, and organizations were designated as “foreign agents”; five individuals were placed on “terrorist” lists; and 10 organizations were declared “undesirable.”
At least 38 priests were subjected to church disciplinary measures for their anti-war stance. Of these, 17 were defrocked, 14 were barred from ministry, and 7 retired.