RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR AND NATIONALISATION OF RELIGIOUS SYMBOLIC SPACE: CONTEXTUALISATION, PROBLEMATIZATION, INTERPRETATION (MONOGRAPH)

On the Institute’s website (in the “Our Publications” section), the electronic version of the monograph “Russian-Ukrainian War and Nationalisation of Religious Symbolic Space: Contextualisation, Problematization, Interpretation”.

Conflicts surrounding unique religious monuments and sites of national historical significance — the Kyiv Pechersk, Pochayiv, and Svyatohirsk Lavras, the mirage of the Desyatynna Church, among others — illustrate Russia’s policy of keeping Ukraine within the orbit of its neo-imperial interests (“Russian World”). This is achieved through the abuse of religion and the instrumentalization of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), with the aim of obstructing de-Russification and, consequently, the nationalization/Ukrainization of Ukraine’s symbolic sacred historical and cultural space — a space in which the symbolic becomes inherently political.

The political misuse of religion under the guise of protecting ethnic minority rights is also evident in the case of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which seeks to restore its former jurisdiction over Ukrainian territories in the border regions of Bukovyna and Bessarabia.