It's Eastertide for most Ukrainians

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Because the Orthodox Church in most of its permutations tells time on the Julian calendar, Easter in Orthodox lands takes place this weekend, not last, as in the West. 

Russia's war in Ukraine reaches into the Orthodox church. While the Russian Patriarch Kirill is a fearsome supporter of Putin's invasion, some of his priests have protested:

More than 320 signed a letter last week accusing Kirill of “heresy” for his warmongering and demanding he be brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal to be deposed.

“Kirill committed moral crimes by blessing the war against Ukraine and fully supporting the aggressive actions of Russian troops on the Ukrainian territory,” they wrote. “It is impossible for us to remain in any form of canonical submission to the Patriarch of Moscow." (The political tensions between Russia and Ukraine had already led to a split within the latter’s Orthodox community, with some congregations no longer associating themselves with the Moscow patriarchate.)

Churches fracture. Nothing novel here, but part of religious life in a connected world.

Tom Nichols is a U.S. expert on Russia and an Orthodox Christian. He has spent a life trying to understand Russia's contradictions. His newsletter essay on the war is a remarkable, personal, account of love for Russians and Orthodoxy. And he reaches a painful conclusion about current developments:

The Western media, in my view, have not paid enough attention to the religious aspect of this war, and in particular Putin’s insistence that he is acting to unite something like an Orthodox Christian empire. ... The religious aspect of this war is difficult for Americans to understand, not only because Orthodoxy is a relatively small denomination in the United States, but because it is an explanation that runs counter to the various narratives of great power conflict, or civilizational clash, or academic realism, all of which to some extent have filled in as explanations for why Putin has launched a fratricidal war with the full approval of the Russian Patriarch. ... And so this week I will go to church, and pray for peace, and in penitence, I will pray for mercy—for me, for the victims of this slaughter, and for my brothers and sisters in my faith who are conducting, and cheering on, this obscene war.

Timothy Snyder, that seemingly omnipresent academic scholar of historical barbarism in Europe, also adds a dark vision of the religious element of the war.

A certain kind of focus on the death of Jesus has a way, in politics at least, of dissolving responsibility for action.  One convenient interpretation of Jesus dying for our sins is that we are innocent.  And then the question arises as to who "we" are.  Those within our group can be seen as free of sin, regardless of what we do, whereas the others can be seen as sinners, regardless of what they do. ...

... Putin’s rhetoric about this war make sense within such a framework.  In a rally, Putin quoted the Bible to celebrate the death of Russians in battle.  He said that their death had made the nation more unified than ever before.  

... May 9th, Putin’s deadline for victory in the Easter Offensive, is itself a kind of secular Easter: it is the day of commemoration of the Soviet victory in the Second World War, in which the death of millions of Soviet soldiers in the 1940s is presented as a permanent redemption of Russia — and a justification of Putin’s wars. When death supplies the meaning, more death supplies more meaning.

Jesus -- save us from your followers, and from our own worst selves.