"God calls for love, but the Church is calling for war." The priest who denounced Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The BBC’s interview with a Russian Orthodox priest who dared to speak out against the conflict in Ukraine. Father Peter Stepanov has since fled the country.

Feb 27, 2024

By Natalia Zotova.

Father Peter. Photo from his profile in VKontakte, published with permission

Father Peter spoke out against the war, used profanities to describe the work of his bishop, called on protesters to run from the authorities, and quit the Russian Orthodox diocese in Bashkortostan. His is a rare case: very few priests are prepared to take a stand against the war - or against the official position the Church takes on it. Insubordination can quickly lead to being defrocked.

He spoke to BBC Russian earlier this month, shortly before he decided he must leave the country.

Father Peter Stepanov is 35 years old. He’s originally from Magnitogorsk in the Urals, but joined the Orthodox Church in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. In 2016 he became a monk, and was ordained as a priest four years later. On February 6, he stridently announced his exit from the Church: it was the only way to remain with God, Father Peter declared.

He publicly addressed his senior cleric, Metropolitan Nikon of Ufa and Bashkortostan, in an open letter:

“With your actions, you have plunged the arms of our Mother Church up to the elbows in the blood of the Ukrainian and Russian people. You have turned your back on God and pledged allegiance to Satan. From the pulpit, you call us to Love. Yet yourself, you give your backing to a blood-soaked massacre.”

Father Peter started a blog on YouTube and called on other members of the church to send their stories to a secure email account. In one of his videos, he talked about his time at a church in Bashkortostan’s Yangan-Tau national park where he said he was a witness to the theft of millions of donations to the church’s restoration fund. The police, and the diocese, did nothing.

The very first video on his channel was devoted to the protests in the republic in mid-January that were brutally put down by the authorities. He called the dispersal of the demonstrations the revenge of the head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, and appealed to protestors to flee: “Don’t wait for them to come for you.”

Father Peter was due to be tried in a Church court earlier this month but has now fled the country to an undisclosed location.

The BBC spoke to him before his departure from Russia.

The open letter and the break with the Church

BBC: Why did you write this open letter - and why now exactly? The letter is against the war, but two years have elapsed since it began.

Father Peter: The situation we find ourselves in now began two years ago. I found myself trapped between the Mother Church on the one hand, and the Holy Scriptures, which reflects the words of the Lord God, on the other. And you find yourself facing a choice: with whom will you stay, with Mum or Dad? Do you think such a decision can be made in a single day? To remain with God in this situation means to renounce the Church. Because God calls for love, and the Church calls for war. As Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would say, the concepts are “polar” and you need to choose between them.

BBC: So now you will be divested of the priesthood?

F.P.: What relationship does the Russian Orthodox Church have to God that permits them to divest me of the priesthood?

BBC: Did you used to read the prayer "O Holy Rus"?

[Patriarch Kirill made this prayer for the victory of Russian troops a compulsory part of church services in the autumn of 2022, just as Putin launched ‘partial mobilisation’ into the Russian army to bolster the fight in Ukraine. It reads in part: “Behold, those who want to fight have taken up arms against Holy Rus, hoping to divide and destroy its united people. Arise, o God, to help your people and grant us victory through your power!” Priests who refuse to read it are punished. Father Alexei Uminsky, defrocked in January, is a recent example.]

F.P.: I left the Church immediately after the Patriarch introduced this prayer. I remember when Bishop Zosima of Magnitogorsk gathered us together and said that life, fate, and the Fatherland had thrown down a challenge before us: you fathers, make sure you make the right choice, he said. I can therefore state that this prayer calling for the victory of Russia over the absolutely innocent Ukrainians does not taint my conscience.

But the prayer’s not even the thing. The Patriarch puts pressure on those priests who quietly work against the war, who refuse to bless the troops. Prayer is only a small part of what they do.

BBC: So you haven't officiated at a service for a year now?

F.P.: Yes, something like that. I am an engineer by education, and I have also taught mathematics. So I have ways of earning money.

BBC: On your YouTube channel, you talked about the corrupt scheme around the church in Elanysh, the village in in the national park where you served. Are you ready to go to court with this?

F.P.: I’m sorry, but to court against whom? The generals from the Interior Ministry? OK, sure, let’s try that and see what happens next… No, crossing the border wouldn’t be far enough after that: I’d have to go to America, at least.

Father Peter shared with us his picture fron VKontakte. Published with permission

"Nobody believes in anything"

BBC: And you decided to leave the Church when you saw the corruption there and the brutal treatment of subordinates by the church leadership?

F.P.: The basis of my desire to remain in the Church disappeared when I saw people's attitude towards it, and towards God. The problem here isn’t just about the attitude towards the clergy. You can ask for a parish in some backwater, somewhere no armoured personnel carrier can get to. But the people will be the same.

BBC: You mean the parishioners?

F.P.: This is the general state of affairs in the entire Russian Orthodox Church. It may have been especially clear to me, but the idea’s the same everywhere. The fact that the Church profits from its parishioners is not the biggest problem facing a priest. Nobody believes in anything. They get their apartment blessed so as to get a better price when they come to sell it. They baptise their children so that the children don't get sick. It's good that children don't get sick; I'm not against it. But there ought to be some sort of spiritual burden. There is a joke in the Church that we usually meet with parishioners twice: once at their baptism, and the second time at the funeral service.

People don't want anything and don’t care. I don't judge the people: they were raised like this, left in this situation. But to serve as a priest amid this is impossible: you are caught between the church authorities, which is just about endurable, but when you turn to the people – let’s do something good, let’s paint a wall or something – you’re lucky if even one shows up.

Yet when you get the chance to hang a priest from a belltower, the whole village will come along and watch. Because it’s blood that we love. Riding a tank into another country – that’s what matters to us. Calling on people to do good is hopeless. You look into their eyes and see utter indifference there.

BBC: But at your church in Elanysh, they donated huge sums. Maybe the people who gave this money wanted something good to come of it?

F.P.: Oh, come off it. Imagine a hypothetical situation: bureaucrats in a bathhouse, and they are lying in the steam room, and one official says to another: I was on holiday in Yangan-Tau, and guess what, there’s this little church there, falling to pieces. I gave them a million. And the other one says: “Nice one, you’re remembering to think of your soul.” It’s all just a pose, puffing out their chests to each other.

Why did the priest choose to speak out in public?

F.P.: I have had a huge response now. Hundreds of people called me, wrote, saying: “Well done, you did right.” Of course, I have damaged the way the Church is perceived. But people will be better off if they don’t fall into the clutches of the Russian Orthodox Church. I’m going to shed light on how they are organised, and what kind of person should be thought of as a believer.

Take this convent, for example. They formed a children’s theatre there and travelled around Russia. There were 30 kids, and they needed costumes to be sewn for them. There was loads of cash in the convent. It’s run by some woman who in the 1990s was the sister of one of the fathers. Would they spend their own money on the costumes? No. It was left to one of the nuns, probably the kindest among them, to do that. She sewed and sewed until she trapped her sciatic nerve and lost the use of her legs. So they lifted her down in their arms and put her on the floor. There she laid, stitching these costumes, until she basically became paralysed. She was left in her cell, lying in her own shit, not wanted by anyone at all. I went with a father to give her communion and the stench brought tears to our eyes. There’s your obedience, there’s what the Church demands from you.

It's not that you need to worship a priest, or kiss his hand: it’s a brutal organisation. How many political prisoners do we have right now? 400-500? In two years of war, snatched away for nothing, because of their political views? [According to the OVD-Info activist group, 1305 political cases were opened between 2022-2024 – BBC.] I have seen the same number of shattered lives in the Church, of people who hadn’t expressed any opinions, hadn’t threatened anyone. It’s just, you know – some get pleasure from breaking people on the wheel.

You’re maybe asking, why did you do all this, Father Peter? Maybe you’re thinking I’m hankering after fame. But if you could only see the shit in which people are living…

Picture this scene: a girl from a boarding school comes to me for confession. They go to this school after the ninth grade, at what, 14 years old? She tells me that she left her room to go and talk on the phone. When she gets back, a seminary teacher catches her and asks where she’d run off to. To talk on the phone. “Don’t fib! You ran off to have a smoke!” Undress, she says. First to her underwear, and then she has to take her bra off. No cigarettes or alcohol are discovered, but the teacher says “I know you smoked the whole pack and tossed it away”. So she makes the girl lie down on a table, lift up her skirt, and starts spanking her on the backside with a ruler. We’re adults, we know what this is called: sexual abuse. There’s a law against it. The girl has no idea – she’s lived her whole life in a village. But she’ll get it later. She’ll work out what the teacher did to her, and how it made her feel.

BBC: So you started the blog to tell such stories?

F.P.: I started my blog because I couldn’t stay silent anymore. I’m sick to death of it all, I've seen enough—it’s off the scale. From your very first days when you enter the Church, they tell you that there’s nothing worse than turning your back on it: it's the first step on the path to Hell. But little by little you begin to come to your senses and understand that the aims they are pursuing have nothing to do with Orthodoxy, or even with human nature.

Power manifests itself in violence, when you make others suffer because of it. As [the late right-wing politician Vladimir] Zhirinovsky said, power is the most powerful drug. You see, they get genuine pleasure from it; it’s like sexual pleasure for them, the suffering of another person. The big thrill for them is to deceive someone and watch them destroy their own life.

Look, there was the story of the Kazan Theological Seminary [Father Peter is referring to a scandal concerning sexual harassment in the Kazan diocese in 2013 – BBC]. By the way, Deacon Andrey Kurayev was made to suffer because of this. [Kurayev was a well-known, outspoken theologian, stripped of the priesthood in 2020 by Patriarch Kirill for speaking out against abuses in the church - BBC.] The vice-rector for educational work there was engaged in systematic violence: he sought out youngsters from distant villages, whose mothers drank, and suggested [sex] to them for relatively small amounts of money. It was at this point that Kurayev raised a wave of protest – how they all tucked their tails between their legs! They squeezed their sphincters together so tightly that you could hear them pop all around the diocese. Sure, Kurayev suffered, yes, but you have no idea how many human lives he saved.

Bashkortostan: "I fell in love with this land and these people"

F.P.: You know, I spent 10 years in Bashkortostan. Before, I hadn’t ever left Magnitogorsk, not to the sea, nor anywhere else. It was fate that dropped me in the Prophet Elijah Monastery, which by happy coincidence, or maybe it was God's will, was located in Bashkortostan. I fell in love with this land and these people. Very beautiful countryside, wonderful people. All this state ideology, about extremism - I don't know, personally I served there peacefully and didn't see any extremism. They are very kind, very soulful. They really managed to preserve traditional family values.

So during the events in Bashkortostan*, I couldn’t keep silent. People going on the street with placards got a 30,000 ruble fine the first time and got arrested the second time. The authorities have loosened off the screws a bit now: with the election coming up, well, they want the image of the ‘kindly Tsar’. But it’s completely different in Bashkortostan – people are being utterly broken.

* Father Peter started his YouTube channel with a warning to protestors after the most populous rallies in Russia since the start of the war took place in Bashkortostan in January. About a thousand demonstrators converged on the courthouse where local activist Fail Alsynov was being sentenced: he was sent to jail for ‘inciting ethnic hatred’. After the protest, dozens of participants were arrested, detained at home or on the street.
Bashkortostan has a strong tradition of protest. In 2020, local residents managed to protect Shikhan Kushtau, a mountain where there were plans to start developing mineral deposits. Father Peter reminded people of that struggle, which they had won, saying the arrests now were an act of revenge by the governor, Radiy Khabirov, for ruining his career back four years earlier. The reprisals against protestors would be severe, he warned, and advised them to flee.

Why are there so few opposition voices within the Russian Orthodox Church?

BBC: Are you aware of other priests who have spoken out against the authorities?

F.P.: I haven't heard of any. In general, though, if we look at overall statistics, how many people who have disagreed with current policies have left the judicial system or law enforcement bodies? Yet the fact is that among the police, the armed forces, the percentage of honest people is much higher than among the clergy. The church system virtually never misfires.

It's tough to get selected for admission in the first place. And second is something I’ve obviously talked to other priests about: one told me “I have served for 15 years. Where else would I go to work? As a cook in a cafeteria?” There’s nothing else he knows how to do.

Okay, me, I'm a monk. But he's already 40-50 years old, plenty of illnesses, two or three children, and the wives usually don't work. Let’s say he speaks up against the war, the authorities clamp down on him, and then what? Go to Armenia with three kids? So I do understand the Russian priesthood.

When you talk in private, even with priests who are pro-government, you’ll hear them say: it’s just a job. If you wind up the Russian people against the Ukrainians, it’s well-paid work. Good vacations, nice parishes. You know, you can get a parish where you’ll make a salary of 10 million rubles a month - instead of 12,000, which is what I got. Sitting in a parish like that you don’t have to worry about your finances for the rest of your life. I reckon nine out of ten would go along with that.

Afterword

The diocese of Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, told a local Telegram channel that they hadn’t heard of Father Peter or his videos. Nevertheless, just a few days after he published his first clips, Father Peter received an official summons to a Church court hearing that would likely defrock him. “The Empire strikes back,” he commented.

Since then, and since this interview was recorded, Father Peter has left Russia for an undisclosed location.

He is still posting on his YouTube channel and recently commented on the death in prison of opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny.

“I heard about Alexei's death and I cannot keep quiet. Of course he was murdered: 27 times in a row, when they locked him in punishment cells. They were waiting for his body to give up. But though they managed to break his flesh, they couldn’t break his spirit,” he said.

“Let him remain a light in our hearts.”