The sinful throne of Kirill - a story about big money, debauchery, ambitions, and the FSB
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, wanted to enter the top of world politics. But fell into disgrace and is now watching the decline of the Russian world
Vladimir Gundyaev (Kirill) made a brilliant career in religion. By 2021, he is a very rich man (probably) with estates all over Russia, a fleet of vehicles, hundreds of servants ready to fulfill any desire. He also has influential patrons in the Kremlin and Lubyanka.
The path to greater faith began for him at the age of 18, when he was brought closer to himself by a priest recruited by the KGB. We can say that Vladimir Gundyaev spent his entire life under the control of special services. And, having received the call sign "Mikhailov", he himself began to build an empire in the Orthodox world, inextricably linked with the state apparatus.
Gundyaev had no other experience. Therefore, he hardly believes that working for the special services is something wrong. But if in the days of the USSR cooperation with the KGB could be justified by possible anti-religious persecutions, today it will not be possible to justify working for the FSB. The ministers of the Russian church do this voluntarily, helping Russia to spread political influence abroad through religion, many former ministers of the Russian Orthodox Church tell LIGA.net .
In Ukraine, the ROC operates through the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). At the end of last year, in a survey by the Razumkov Center, 22% of Ukrainians called themselves parishioners of the UOC-MP. We are talking about millions of people and a gigantic impact on the internal situation in the country. At the same time, the role of the Russian Church in Ukraine is weakening every year - in the same survey, 32% of Ukrainians called themselves parishioners of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
We tell the story of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church: how the KGB/FSB integrated into the Russian Orthodox Church; how much is the Russian peace of Gundyaev-Putin; how much money is at the disposal of the ROC. We also found and talked to church officials whom Kirill expelled, including for refusing to work for the FSB. What Kirill promised Putin before 2014 and why he failed to realize his plans is a big story from LIGA.net . Read also the previous text of the cycle First among equals. How the Orthodox World of Patriarch Bartholomew Works .
WHO IS VLADIMIR GUNDIAYEV
The future head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill (Vladimir Gundyaev), was born in the post-war 1946. The start of a career is closely connected with the patronage of the most influential metropolitan, who collaborated with the KGB, Nikodim (Rotov), says Alexander Soldatov, a religious scholar and guest lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University, to LIGA.net .
“Nikodim brought Volodya closer to him when he was 18 years old. Thanks to the special sympathies and disposition of Nikodim, who had only a secondary education, Volodya, becoming his personal secretary, almost externally graduated from the Leningrad theological schools, became a monk, quickly became a hieromonk and archimandrite,” recalls Soldiers.
Already at the age of 20, Kirill represented the Russian Orthodox Church at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. At the age of 27, he became the rector of the Leningrad Theological Academy, without any scientific work at all.
Kirill's career was so rapid that it even violated age restrictions and church canons, director of the Center for Religious Security Dmitry Gorevoy tells LIGA.net . According to canon law, a person who is at least 25 years old can become a deacon, a priest - 30, a bishop - 35 years old.
All this happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a fast-paced career without the active assistance of the KGB was impossible, says Soldatov. Especially - without the first main department responsible for foreign intelligence. And Kirill traveled endlessly to the countries of the Middle East and Africa, Europe and the USA, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania.
According to archival documents and thanks to a comparison of the dates of the visits, it can be assumed that the future head of the Russian Orthodox Church received the operational pseudonym Mikhailov, and his patron, Metropolitan Nikodim, collaborated with the special services under the pseudonym Svyatoslav. This is confirmed by the religious scholar Soldiers. He says that people from Nikodim's inner circle recalled that Nikodim willingly blessed church youths for recruitment into the KGB, accompanying this with the phrase: "Don't be afraid - we will deceive them."
Nikodim was in close relations with the special services, he carried out party assignments abroad, Gorevoy says. In fact, he was a tool of the KGB that used the church to promote the interests of the USSR: “He headed the department for external church relations, contacted foreigners, created a group of top hierarchs, which they called Nikodimovites. This group presented itself as liberal, modern in views, but worked for Soviet Union".
Goreva on the merger of the Russian Orthodox Church with the KGB/FSB: "All their undercover nicknames have long been known. There are many declassified archival documents."
The honorary primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Filaret also admitted that without patronage in the "organs" not a single priest could rise to the level of a hierarch. He was also in the KGB system. The call sign of Filaret on Lubyanka is also known - agent Antonov.
“At one time we joked about a photograph in which Putin, already president, is talking with Patriarch Alexy II . What should be put under this photo: the colonel is talking to the general,” says LIGA.net , a religious scholar, Doctor of Philosophy Yuri Chernomorets. – Recruitment was a common practice. This applied to almost all bishops. It cannot be avoided. Cyril is no exception."
Three years ago, the then Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria Valery Simeonov openly called Kirill a KGB agent . A month ago, the Sofia court actually recognized that this was true - not seeing slander in these words: "We must clearly tell people who Cyril is. He did not come down from heaven. He does not come from paradise and is not a messenger of God. Cyril is known as a cigarette Metropolitan of Russia... This is not an Eastern Orthodox priest. This is an agent Mikhailov from the Soviet KGB, a second-rate Soviet agent ."
After the collapse of the USSR, agents in the Russian Orthodox Church did not go away, but came under the auspices of the successor to the KGB - the Federal Security Service.
Kirill looks at this "cooperation" with the FSB as a tool. Today he makes concessions to the system, and tomorrow he wins due to this - for the church, for himself personally, Chernomorets believes. He wanted, having entered into close activity with all structures, to become a geopolitical leader, so that the world would have the Pope and Patriarch Kirill, and no one else.
In the Soviet years, every seminarian was recruited while still a student, says Soldatov. Only a few managed to avoid this. Now, he believes, the situation is different - they choose promising ones. The authorities and special services no longer consider the ROC as a source of danger or an alternative ideology, therefore they do not see the need to create a mass agent network in the church - it has become part of the general state vertical.
The only thing that does not change is that the top of the Russian Orthodox Church is necessarily selected from among those recruited, the religious scholars interviewed agree.
"I CARRIED MONEY TO BRIBE THE ANTIOCHIS PATRIARCHATE"
In December 2019, the St. Petersburg apartment of Bishop Flavian of the Russian Orthodox Church (Maxim Mitrofanov) was searched. While the operatives, according to Flavian, were looking for drugs from the bishop, Lieutenant Krasavin, an FSB operative, "ran out for a drink."
“Literally got me drunk,” Flavian recalls his recruitment. “And he said that I have been in their development since 2007. That they need information about my connections. And after working in London, I have a lot of acquaintances with whom I keep in touch: they work for the UN, they are part of the circle of some Russian oligarchs."
year 2014. Bishop Flavian and head of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill: ordination to the bishops (photo - Cherepovets diocese)
Flavian consulted his lawyers and refused.
“I told him that I would not cooperate with an organization whose hands are up to the elbows in the blood of Russian priests and Russian people,” he said in an interview with the Russian service of Radio Liberty. “This organization is completely demonic. I said so to his face ". The lieutenant threatened that the bishop would be sorry.
The FSB lieutenant did not lie. Until recently, Flavian was at the top of the church hierarchy. In 2018, according to Flavian’s personal confession, he brought money to the Patriarch of Antioch for him to speak out against the tomos of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
In March last year, the Kremlin-controlled media published the news that a whole drug laboratory was found in Flavian's apartment (no less, no more). The image of the apostate was reinforced with additional sins - allegedly Flavian had connections with a former gay escort worker, Cain Montanelli.
After another search in December 2020, the bishop left for London. He is sure that he became a victim of the special services for refusing to cooperate with the FSB. The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church tried him in absentia and deprived him of the priesthood.
"They just started giving him nightmares," Gorevoy explains to LIGA.net . "The Patriarchate generally doesn't like to get into a clinch with the secret services. The Patriarchy doesn't protect its clerics, but gives them to be torn to pieces."
Around the same period when Flavian was searched one after another, in December 2019, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church awarded the FSB Director General of the Army Alexander Bortnikov with an order . Literally scattered in praise: "It is very honorable for me to present the order to a person whose name and position you will now hear."
The awarding took place after the consecration of a military temple in the Moscow region of South Butovo. Its construction was completed "thanks to the significant efforts and assistance of the department of military counterintelligence" of the FSB of Russia.
LIGA.net contacted Flavian. He confirmed his story to us, but said that he was not ready for a big interview yet. “I’m not ready for this right now... It won’t work to answer briefly even the question of how the FSB tried to force me to cooperate. They worked both directly and through colleagues, superiors, subordinates, friends. It’s a long story,” he said. .
Another former archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church from Rostov-on-Don Alexander Usatov is forced to hide in the Netherlands due to threats in Russia. “I did not want to see the implementation of the threats received, so I left Russia forever in July 2020,” he admitted in an interview with LIGA.net .
Alexander Usatov (photo - personal Instagram)
The archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church realized homosexuality at the age of 22 and went to serve in the church in order to "correct" his orientation. But instead, he discovered in the Russian Orthodox Church, according to him, a well-developed gay lobby.
Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, he says, allow themselves any sins if they do not find out about it outside the system.
"They can spend church money uncontrollably, drive drunk, engage in promiscuous sexual relations ... I know about such cases personally and from accomplices in events. Some priests sleep with prostitutes, others have a mistress, someone needs sex with guys This is best described by the saying: everything is possible, the main thing is not to sleep, "says Usatov.
About 10 years ago, Usatov was called to his place by Metropolitan Mercury of Rostov, says the archpriest. “He said that my sex life as a homosexual should be an exclusively secret for everyone,” Usatov recalls. “And if someone finds out about this, he will destroy me.”
Usatov tells how he began to lose faith: “I felt ashamed that the ministry of a priest is identified with the antics of such freaks in cassocks as Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, who advises to “break a woman on the knee,” or priest Ivan Okhlobystin, who calls for “burning gays in ovens” .
In the end, Usatov says, he became indignant at the hysteria of homophobia in one of the churches in his city: “Hearing this, the rector made it clear that I had crossed the border ... He reported what was happening to the metropolitan ... I was denounced to a special state department ".
Metropolitan Mercury, according to Usatov, confirmed that he "was in the security agencies," and "these people will take care of" him. He also made it clear that Usatov would no longer be defended. Then the priest tried to leave the church, wrote a statement addressed to Cyril with a request to deprive him of his dignity due to unbelief. But the system did not want to say goodbye quietly.
"During a farewell conversation with the metropolitan, he demanded that I physically leave the Rostov region," says Usatov.
They wanted to charge him with pedophilia, rape, drugs, and in the end - schizophrenia, in order to send him to "punitive psychiatry." “The Metropolitan said that I would go out the window,” Usatov recalls.
As a result, he left the country and received refugee status.
Usatov believes that the Russian authorities do not need to make an effort to penetrate the ROC: "This structure was literally created by the NKVD in 1943 ... As soon as a priest opposes the authorities, they are defrocked, put on trial."
BILLIONS IN ENVELOPES. HOW MUCH IS THE THRON OF KIRILL
There is no reliable data on the budget of the ROC. This is completely classified data, says Russian religious scholar and church dissident Sergei Chapnin. “And I don’t think that the situation will change in the coming years, since corruption is an important component of the system that Kirill built,” the religious scholar says.
Several times journalists tried to investigate the topic of money in the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the best was held by the Russian edition of RBC in 2016. The journalists found out that the ROC is actually a corporation, where each parish is registered as a separate non-profit organization, which means that it does not pay taxes.
The ROC has more than 30,000 parishes. According to journalists, each of them brings from small amounts to 3,000,000 rubles of income per month (about $45,000 at the exchange rate of 2016). We are talking about donations, selling candles, icons, religious literature. From 10% to 50% parishes give "up" - to the diocese. The diocese accumulates tribute and transfers 15% of the amount to the patriarchy.
Bishop Flavian said that his personal church support under this scheme reached one and a half million rubles a month (about $ 20,000), and "this is the normal income of a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church." All this is tax free. Money came to the bishop on the card. No one counts how many bishops receive in envelopes.
In the early 2000s, Archbishop Clement said that 55% of the income of the ROC comes from commercial activities, 40% comes from donations from sponsors, and only 5% comes from deductions from dioceses. Now there are fewer donations, and deductions from dioceses can reach half the budget.
The ROC has strict financial discipline, Chapnin says. The main criterion for the effectiveness of the rector/abbot/bishop is the ability to attract money for deductions to the diocese and then to the patriarchy.
"The scheme of deductions is quite complicated. Something is transferred by bank payments, something is transferred in an envelope. It is important for both the dioceses and the patriarchy to maintain an uncontrolled turnover of cash. For this, double and sometimes triple bookkeeping is carried out at all levels of church government: one - for the tax authorities, the other - for official reports to the patriarchate, and the third - for himself," explains Chapnin.
In Moscow, under Kirill, even a special "tariff scale" was developed for taxing parishes. The minimum amount of deductions is 100,000 rubles per year ($1,300) for small house churches. Parish churches of medium size pay from 600,000 ($8,000) to 1,000,000 rubles a year ($13,000), churches in residential areas pay several million rubles.
These are statistics for 2018. Given that there were 1,179 churches in the Russian capital, the patriarchate receives about a billion rubles annually ($13.3 million) from them. And this is only in Moscow.
The sponsors are both Russia itself, represented by the federal and local budgets, which allocate huge amounts of money for joint programs with the Russian Orthodox Church (mainly under the guise of restoration or construction of churches), as well as the largest corporations and even medium-sized businesses, which are under pressure from administrative resources.
A classic example is the informal tax on the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, with which the ex-mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, imposed all the capital's businessmen.
According to RBC, the budget of the Russian Orthodox Church is also fed by commercial enterprises. The main ones are the Sofrino plant and the Danilovskaya hotel. Sofrino produces icons, furniture, tombs, candles, provides half of Russian churches. In the dioceses, it is strongly recommended to purchase Sofrino products.
The Danilovskaya Hotel is another asset of the Russian Orthodox Church. A day in a single room with breakfast on weekdays starts from 5,500 rubles with a discount (almost 2,000 UAH), a junior suite - 11,000 rubles (4,000 UAH). The income of the hotel in 2013 was estimated by RBC at 137 million rubles.
The ROC is also interested in medicines, jewelry, leasing conference rooms, agriculture, and the funeral services market.
The role of the state in financing the ROC is also great, explains Soldatov. All the largest Russian officials and oligarchs are members of the boards of trustees of the largest monasteries, through which multi-billion sums pass. For example, the board of trustees of the New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow, headed by Medvedev, raised billions of rubles for its reconstruction. But since there are no civil control institutions in Russia, it is impossible to verify the spending of money.
According to RBC, in 2012-2015, the Russian Orthodox Church and related structures received 14 billion rubles from the state. The budget for 2016 included 2.6 billion rubles for the Russian Orthodox Church. The state gives money to the church within the framework of federal programs related to the development of spiritual and educational centers, the preservation and restoration of churches.
One of the most successful applicants for state funding and private investment is Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov), who has a reputation as "Putin's confessor." In various cities of the Russian Federation, he creates giant multimedia propaganda parks "Russia is my history" for billions of rubles, says Soldatov. Now there are already about 30 such parks. Their main goal is to inspire young people with the ideology of the Russian world.
No one undertakes to at least roughly assess the state of Cyril himself. "The head of the Russian Orthodox Church said last summer that there were rumors that he had $4-8 billion. But he did not confirm these rumors," Soldatov said.
One tour of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Latin America in 2016 is estimated at $ 260 million. About a hundred people accompanied him on the voyage. Kirill got to Antarctica - held a liturgy in the only church of the Russian Orthodox Church and looked at the penguins.
In addition, in numerous investigations, Kirill is credited with a five-room apartment in the center of Moscow, an airplane , a yacht ( more than one ), an armored train , a villa in Switzerland , a palace , as well as a large fleet of luxury cars.
DECLINE OF THE RUSSIAN WORLD. HOW KIRILL LOSE THE MOSCOW THRONE
In 2009, Kirill led the Russian Orthodox Church thanks to the support of Putin and the oligarchs, says religious scholar Soldatov. Many of the council's delegates were businessmen and members of United Russia. And Kirill had the image of an educated bishop who had an oratorical gift and vast experience in ecclesiastical and diplomatic work, Russian religious scholar Chapnin tells LIGA.net .
"Becoming a patriarch, he dealt quite harshly with his opponents and for many years secured himself from the bishops' opposition," he adds.
Kirill was motivated by vanity, Gorevoy says: "He positioned himself in such a way that he was among the top five persons in office. There is the president, the prime minister, the speaker of the Duma, the head of the Federation Council and the patriarch."
For quite a long time, Kirill managed to stay close to Putin. But in recent years, the Russian president seems to be disappointed. The interlocutors interviewed by LIGA.net say: The Kremlin is less and less interested in the ROC and the electoral potential of the Church.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, experts say, became a victim of his own excessive rigidity. “Everyone who came across him is talking about this,” the theologian Ilya Bey tells LIGA.net . “And it seems to me that he is under the influence of the occultists. component, something of the level of a personal egregor.
The framework of Kirill's thinking is neo-imperial, says Archimandrite, Doctor of Philosophy Kirill Govorun. He is well acquainted with the ROC. In 2009, Govorun was sent to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. “I think that before 2014, his vision inspired the Kremlin. This is how the ideology of the Russian world appeared, which turned from marginal to central precisely thanks to the church,” he told LIGA.net .
Now the Russian world may be the beginning of the end for Kirill. Because it was the head of the Russian Orthodox Church who sold Putin the idea of a "Russian world" with an emphasis on Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Gorevoy says.
"Kirill convinced Putin that if the Kremlin wants to keep Ukraine in the orbit of influence, then the Russian Orthodox Church will be the best performer. This will allow it to exert ideological, cultural, informational influence through church channels. The author of the concept of the "Russian world" in its current form is Kirill personally," Gorevoy noted.
He overcame the second stage in 2018, when official Kyiv suddenly received a tomos of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine for Moscow. Cyril, who fancied himself an Orthodox pope, could not do anything. For the Russian world, this meant the end of influence in Ukraine.
The third step down for Cyril became fatal - after it they began to talk about the imminent removal of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and his replacement with another candidate. We are talking about an open confrontation with the Ecumenical Church of Patriarch Bartholomew. In an attempt to cancel the tomos for the OCU, Kirill threw himself into all serious trouble, but lost ( First among equals. How the Orthodox world of Patriarch Bartholomew works ).
Cyril's main problem is the lack of real influence. When the ROC broke off relations with Constantinople, other churches did not follow. Moreover, three churches have confirmed the autocephaly of the OCU, and two or four more are being determined. This was the failure of Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church tried to hold a meeting of churches in Jordanian Amman in order to raise the issue of "church schism" and challenge the primacy of Patriarch Bartholomew. But Cyril again did not succeed: the largest and most ancient churches refused to legalize Moscow's plans and did not come. The demarche of the Russian Orthodox Church not only did not expand Moscow's influence, but outlined its meager boundaries.
See also: How the Russian Orthodox Church wove a big conspiracy against Ukraine and failed
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church believed that he could seize the parishes of churches that recognized the OCU. But even here he failed. The influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which failed to confirm the threats, suffered even more. And the Kremlin sees it.
"The sphere of influence of the Russian Orthodox Church is shrinking every year," confirms the theologian Bey. "And among the Orthodox churches, too." In fact, he argues, only three or four threads remained in Kirill’s hands: the local churches of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Poland, Serbia and (very conditionally) Bulgaria: “The fact is that in Bulgaria and Serbia, which are close to Greece, there is already a higher the clergy receive predominantly Greek education, and more and more breathes in the direction of Greece and Patriarch Bartholomew. And the lobby recruited during the KGB alliance is losing power."
Kirill wanted to influence, but his main asset in the world is ROCOR and the Exarchates. After the tomos of the OCU and the schism with Constantinople, he loses the support of the local churches.
This is felt even at the level of ordinary European parishes, says Bey, whose acquaintances in Slovakia were loyal to the ROC: “But when they saw Moscow’s reaction to the recognition of the OCU, they began to realize that Moscow was playing the wrong game here.”
“In Europe, the Russian Orthodox Church continues to plant the Moscow cult in the old fashioned way,” the religious scholar adds. “I noticed this very clearly in Belgium in Russian parishes: when the word “Orthodoxy” was heard twice in a sermon by the local metropolitan, and the word “Moscow” in any combinations - 15 times. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. And in Europe there is a completely different attitude towards Orthodoxy.
In Russia, Kirill can hardly be called an influential political figure either, Gorevoy says. The ROC can still lobby for business interests. For example, to remove the obligation to submit financial statements or adhere to the Labor Code, to assign pilgrimage as tourism only to the ROC. "But politically, Kirill has no influence. Even if he sincerely believes in it," adds Gorevoy.
Due to the complex nature around Cyril, an inner circle was hardly formed, says Soldatov - the favorites quickly fall into disgrace. But while Cyril sympathizes with several people.
Firstly, we are talking about his personal secretary Alexy (Turikov) , who in a year from a subdeacon became an archimandrite. He is one of the few who live together with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in self-isolation. There is also Archimandrite Eli (Nozdrin) , a monk close to Nikodim, as well as Protopresbyter Vladimir Divakov , secretary of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. Cyril feels certain sympathy for the Rostov Metropolitan Mercury (Ivanov) , as well as for the Metropolitan Anthony (Sevryuk) serving in Paris .
“Perhaps he is preparing him as his heir,” Soldatov admits, relying on observational experience. “But there is no clear candidate N1 yet.”
It is possible that already this year the head of the Russian Orthodox Church will have to retire to one of the residences "to retire." He turns 75 years old. Upon reaching this age, the diocesan bishop must submit an application for resignation. “He is unlikely to write about himself, but there may be some literalists who will remind him of such a need and submit the issue for consideration by the synod,” says the religious scholar Ilya Bey. “And it may happen that very soon Cyril will no longer be on the throne ".
At 10.19 in this video, look who is the front row cheering Putin .