Czech Republic clamps down on its Orthodox church, fears of ties to Russia

Brussels – There are doubts that the Orthodox Church may be working for Russia and its ‘overlord,’ Vladimir Putin. There are growing concerns in the Czech Republic, leading some political groups to call for the appropriate checks with a thorough investigation. Pavel Fischer, president of the Senate Security Committee, called on the government in Prague to turn the spotlight on the Orthodox churches in the country. These would be increasingly linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, answering to Kirill, the orthodox leader, whom the EU wanted to sanction for his ties to Putin and his role in supporting the war in Ukraine.

There are no calls to ban the Orthodox church or to impose religious restrictions, but to verify that in the Czech Republic, there are no emissaries of Putin hiding in the folds of Christianity. The government should​ proceed only in that case with an eventual shutdown of the place of worship and the withdrawal of permits and concessions. They are starting to nit-pick due to fear of pro-Russian influence.

The decision is also due to precedents after the Czech Republic closed the online newspaper Voice of Europe, which spread Russian propaganda and disinformation, forcing national authorities to shut down the site. It is no coincidence that the republic’s parliament asked the intelligence services to check all Orthodox churches in the country to see if they are involved in operations to spread the pro-Russian narrative. In this regard, the Czech Senate is mulling defining and proposing a bill that would allow monitoring activities of all Orthodox churches.

In the name of security, there is interference with religious freedom. However, Fischer stressed that “freedom of religion and association must not be exploited to allow hostile foreign states to exert illegitimate influence.”

The stance of Czech authorities follows the clampdown in Ukraine, which recently passed a historic law banning the activities of a branch of the Orthodox Church linked to Russia. A ban that once again confirms the break between Russia and Ukraine, divided not only by the ongoing war but purely from a confessional point of view. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has become independent of the Moscow Patriarchate, creating an autonomous Church recognized as such in 2019 and a source of friction and tension with the Russian Federation.