Foreign activity of the Russian orthodox church as a weapon of the hybrid war against Ukraine

Abstract

The article is concerned with the study of the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as an instrument for implementing the policy of the Russian Federation in a hybrid war against Ukraine. The main purpose of the research is to determine how Moscow uses in its hybrid technologies and capabilities of the Russian Orthodox Church to achieve its political goals on the global level. The historical analysis of the international activities of the ROC became the basis of the study. Particular attention in the article is devoted to the activities of the Department of External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, which was created under Stalin in 1946 and received a new impulse under Putin. In this context, the speech goes about the fact that the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate was and remains the shadow body of the special services of the Russian Federation, which work under religious cover on the global level.