It was done by a Ukrainian priest in the early 2000s

1. Russia did not do this.
2. Even if Russia is a kleptocracy, it has nothing to do with this article.
3. You didn’t read the article.

Yeah, but you’re NOT wrong. There’s a lot more to this, and Orthodoxy is not called “Byzantine” for no reason, lol.

The schism between Moscow-loyal priests and believers, and Ukraine-loyal priests and believers, really started in earnest back around the time of the annexation of Crimea and Donbass, but then got really bad around the time of Maidan, when Ukraine forcefully rejected Putin’s puppet as president but the Russia-loyal parts of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine took orders from Moscow to support him.

So when the war started last year, any remaining unity within the church collapsed. The Orthodox church in Ukraine split: some priests stayed faithful to Moscow and officially joined the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine; the rest stayed faithful to Ukraine and became the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and have requested autocephaly (self-rule) from the Patriarch of Constantinople (the head guy of Orthodoxy), going right over Moscow’s head to do so.

(I should note that this is the same way that the Orthodox Church of America requested and eventually obtained its autocephaly from the Russian Orthodox Church, but with far less bloodshed.)

In eastern Europe Orthodox communities, the priest is a part of the neighborhood. He’s there for every meaningful event, a servant to everyone, someone who lives next door in a house that looks the same as your own. And the smaller the town, the more true this tends to be. No jets and flashy cars for these guys; they get paid very little and serve their neighbors whenever called upon to do so. To be absolutely clear, most of these Ukrainian priests live poorly, are absolutely dedicated to their parishioners, no matter what side they are on, and it cost them personally in many ways to leave the Russian church. Leaving Russia is not something you get to do for free as a priest: it brings the war straight into your own congregation, it risks your priesthood, your position, often the home you live in, etc.

But the ones that are bad are really, REALLY bad: they are political climbers within the church structure, priests who never acknowledged Ukrainian independence in 1991, still believing it is part of Russia that never left, who supported that corrupt assclown Viktor Yanukovich even after he was spirited away to Russian safety, applauded the annexations, and are there solely to make coin and do Russia’s bidding. Many of them joined the Moscow Patriarchate outright, which is no surprise because Russia has been paying them anyway, but there are some who stayed and entered the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Not because they believe in Ukraine, but because openly corrupt Metropolitan Kyrill, the current head of the Russian Orthodox Church, ordered them to do so: to turn the new Ukraine home-rule church into a fifth column for Putin to both spy and do damage for Russia against Ukraine.

There is zero question in my mind that the priest who stole these national treasures is one of these Moscow rats: they do love the cash they can see far more than the “god” they can’t, and the only people they serve are themselves.

As with everything else Putin touches, it is a rotten, decaying mess. So your first sentence, “Russia truly is a kleptocracy,” needs zero correction. It stands as is. And if you like never ending tales of who did what to whom and the lying liars who want to ensure no one can ever figure out which is which, read the two links above.