Game(s) of Thrones: The Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Ecclesiastical Warfare - historical and present

In the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, another conflict is escalating by the day, i.e. the ”war” between and among the different Orthodox Churches. The media has not quite picked up on this severe conflict, but many researchers have, like Serhii Plokhy, Nikolas Denysenko, Cyril Hovorun and several other distinguished scholars from Ukraine, as well as from the international Research community. The conflict can be understood from political, historical, national and ecclesiological perspectives, and this ongoing study is using the latter research approach. It is important to reach an understanding of the basis of the conflict, which is fundamentally ecclesiological, but has political consequences and effects presently, not only on the Churches, but also in Ukrainian society. Historically the Orthodox Church has been present in Ukraine since 988 and the baptism of Rus, but through the periods of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and Bolshevism, the matter of Canonical territory and jurisdiction has fluctuated and resulted in an infected situation where three different Patriarchs claim Ukraine as their Canonical territory. A situation that is ecclesiologically impossible, but is still a reality. Another factor is that since Ukraine’s independence in August 1991, the State has taken sides with different jurisdictions according to each president's Church affiliation or preference, therefore the Churches have been drawn into politics and have been politicized, as well as the State have been, to some extent, theologized.

Maria Eckerdal, is a Researcher at the Institute of Russian- and Eurasian Studies (IRES) at Uppsala University. She completed her PhD in Ecclesiology at the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, and has a Master's degree in Russian Language in International Relations, at the same university. She has published three books on the subject of Ecclesiology and has contributed articles on Ecclesiology and the Catholicity of the Church to various books and journals. In the Russian field she has concentrated her essays and published articles on the subject of the Orthodox Church and Orthodox thinkers like Konstantin Leontiev, but especially focusing on the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the mnemonic history project run by the Russian State, initiated by the Church, under the name of ”Rossija – moija istorija”. Currently she is studying the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, and the complex situation of several jurisdictions on the same canonical territory.