Rola czynnika religijnego w konflikcie rosyjsko-ukraińskim przed rokiem 2022, z perspektywy stosunków między Kościołem Prawosławnym Ukrainy i Ukraińskim Kościołem Prawosławnym Patriarchatu Moskiewskiego
The Role of the Religious Factor in the Russia–Ukraine Confl ict before 2022 from the Perspective of Relations between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Churchof the Moscow Patriarchate

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to verify the hypothesis on the infl uence and signifi cance of the religious factor in the Russia–Ukraine confl ict from the perspective of relations between the main Orthodox churches in Ukraine: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). Considering the quantitative indicators, Ukraine is not a country particularly predestined to be a party to a religious confl ict – be it an objective or an identity type. At the same time, social behaviour indicates an increase in religiously motivated social hostility, the further escalation of which is highly probable due to the Russian aggression on Ukraine. Believers from both Churches indicated non-religious and non--ethnic issues as the main causes of the confl ict between the Orthodox churches. The purely political nature of the confl ict between the churches was emphasised, refl ecting the political and military confl ict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. To sum up, based on the research results, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the religious factor was a current and signifi cant, but not the leading, confl ict factor in the Russia–Ukraine war in 2021 from the perspective of religious relations in Ukraine. The UOC-PM is predestined to the role of a declining church, playing a progressively less important role in religious relations in Ukraine for political, identity and demographic reasons. At the same time, the OCU is undoubtedly destined – also under the conditions of the ongoing war – to play a leading role in the process of consolidating Ukrainian national and state identity.

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