Orthodox disinformation pipelines shaping the Western Balkans landscape

In the past year, little has changed in Ukraine’s battlefield, but Russian church manipulation of Orthodoxy has intensified significantly, especially in the Western Balkans, where North Macedonia’s church – the MOC (Ohrid Archdiocese) now serves as a secondary Kremlin conduit. The religious disinformation ecosystem continues to adapt, exploiting emotions and confessional identity as new terrains for advancing Moscow-friendly messaging

 

Politically, most of the Western Balkans support Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its fifth year. Even Serbia, under Aleksandar Vučić, which has traditionally been seen as Moscow’s ally, has formally endorsed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. However, this stance is less evident among the Orthodox churches in the region, which shy away from naming the perpetrator of the war and instead cheer for Russian church domination over Ukraine.

In doing so, the gates for defending the Kremlin’s expanding interests in the Western Balkans have been left open, and the political discourse has been flooded with disinformation — especially regarding religious themes surrounding the war.

Given the duration of the Russian war against Ukraine, the disinformation ecosystem has also evolved, focusing more on emotions as a vehicle of shaping attitudes, where identity and confessional belonging now serve as the new arena of cognitive influence.

That is why novel Kremlin-backed approaches, such as propagandistic material in the film and arts sector, as well as strategies aimed at undermining multi-confessional relations in the Balkans, which ultimately serve Moscow’s priorities, are becoming more widespread.

Restrictions on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church 

A central theme, mainly propagated by Russia to further its invasion goals in Ukraine, is the treatment of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by authorities in Kyiv, which is under intense state scrutiny regarding its perceived ties to Moscow. 

Apart from the Church of Greece, the Orthodox Churches in the Balkans have expressed strong support for the UOC. Neither the Serbian Orthodox Church nor the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archdiocese (MOC-OA) recognise the autocephaly of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), acquired in 2019.

Both Balkan churches have experienced varying degrees of Moscow’s influence, most recently in the case of the Ohrid Archdiocese, significantly shaping their political and religious perspectives on Ukraine. As a result, they have been spreading a one-sided image of Ukraine’s religious landscape amid the war, focused solely on Zelensky’s treatment of the UOC.

In both countries, nationalistic news portals and church-affiliated media rarely report on freedom of religion concerns in connection with the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories or the Russian destruction of Orthodox churches. So far, over 600 religious objects, including many Orthodox churches, have been damaged or destroyed by Russian strikes across Ukraine.  

The most intense messaging has been focused on the adoption of Law No. 3894, through which Ukraine introduced a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious entities considered to have links to the aggressor state, Russia.  

Following an investigation by the Ukrainian state body for freedom of religion, DESS, it concluded that the UOC remains canonically part of the Moscow Patriarchate. Ukraine’s lawmakers have justified the necessity of the law by arguing that religious organisations linked to Moscow serve as conduits for the ‘Russian World’ ideology, undermining Ukraine’s security. 

Western Balkan media outlets and personalities known to be close to Russia, as well as regional churches, have mirrored the narratives advanced by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church in the religious dimension of the war in Ukraine. This includes the untrue assertion that in 2024, Zelensky banned the “canonical church” in Ukraine, giving the impression that there is only one Orthodox church in Ukraine and that the ban has already taken effect, despite the existence of the ongoing judicial oversight process. It will ultimately be for the Ukrainian courts to decide on any termination of activities.  

In North Macedonia, the opening of the pro-Moscow church portal Liturgija.mk under the auspices of the MOC-OA, which sources most of its articles on Ukraine from Russian and Russian-friendly sources such as OrthoChristian.com, contributes to disinformation in the Macedonian media but also among clergy and believers affiliated to the MOC-OA, as it shapes and accelerates pro-Russian sentiment in the war against Ukraine.  

The overwhelmingly unchecked and unverified direct translation of religious developments in Ukraine in favour of the Kremlin’s agenda, with disproportionate reporting, normalises the Russian war efforts. For example, in 2024, Liturgija.mk listed Donetsk as part of the Russian Federation.

 

Disinformation evolution  

 As political relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the MOC-OA continue to improve, the Kremlin has opened another direct vector of influence in North Macedonia, complementing the Serbian one, which is already extending to Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.  

Speaking to AntiDisinfo, Dr. Natasia Kalajdziovski, a Senior Analyst at London security firm SecAlliance, noted the changing nature of the Russian messaging in the Balkans. According to her, in several countries, Russian state channels do not have the audience reach they once did.  

Although the traditional information channels, including RT and Sputnik, “remain significant,” their relevance and reach, Kalajdziovski explained, “depend more on indirect reach than direct broadcasting.”  

“The narratives carried by RT and Sputnik have not disappeared; they have migrated into local media, political talk shows, online portals, and partisan broadcasters that rebroadcast or reinterpret Kremlin messages without carrying the Russian brand,” she stated. 

This changing nature of the Kremlin’s messaging in the Balkans can be observed through the release and extensive promotion of Emir Kusturica’s 2024 film, backed by the Kremlin, focusing on Ukraine’s Orthodoxy, called “People of Christ. Our Time”. The core messages about Zelensky’s ‘Orthodox ban’ have been presented in the form of a documentary, which opens another avenue, the arts and culture, for Kremlin-aligned messaging aimed at general audiences in the Balkans. 

This approach is not a coincidence. Sports and culture were always part of Russian soft power, and a context where influence operations were deployed, Dr. Kalajdziovski explained.  

According to her, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the two arenas “have become much more prominent and explicitly integrated into information operations, allowing Kremlin-linked actors to reach apolitical or emotionally engaged audiences who may not consume geopolitical content.” 

The global film promotion gives away the strong Kremlin backing from the highest figures like Putin himself, Patriarch Kirill, as well as the Russian foreign ministry. In the Balkans, it has received a similar treatment by Serbian Patriarch Porfirije, who was present at the premiere in Belgrade in 2024.

Serbian Metropolitan Irinej of Bačka, who is featured in the documentary, compared the treatment of the church to the state policies of Lenin and Stalin. He also presented the war to Balkan audiences as a moral struggle between good and evil, echoing Patriarch Kirill’s framing and portraying Russia’s actions as a response to Western interference in Ukraine. 

Fitim Gashi, a senior researcher at Sbunker, has observed that the documentary also uses the Kosovo-Serbia issue as a “historical mirror” for Russia’s framing of the war in Ukraine.  

“The core messages are that Western intervention in Kosovo was unjust and harmful, and that similar ‘meddling’ is now happening in Ukraine, with Russia cast as the ‘wronged side’; also that Serbia (or the Serb side) in Kosovo was portrayed globally as the aggressor or villain, but that, according to the film’s perspective, was a misrepresentation, just as Russia now claims to be misrepresented,” Gashi shared with Antidisinfo. 

Rising anti-Catholic sentiments 

Although warming relations between the MOC-OA and the Russian Orthodox Church allow Kremlin messaging to bypass Belgrade and directly influence the Macedonian public and church representatives, Russia also benefits from reviving historical antagonisms in the region, exploiting interconfessional tensions involving the Vatican through the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC). 

In Montenegro, as well as Kosovo, where the SOC extends, pro-Serbian and Russian portals and nationalistic voices allege ongoing territorial and political expansion by Rome in the Balkans, framing it as a civilisational conflict between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

The commemoration of the Nicaea anniversary in November in Turkey, attended by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope Leo XIV, and several other Christian representatives, became a launchpad for attacks in Montenegro and in Serbia on the Ecumenical Patriarch’s historical prerogatives and warning of “unia” with the Catholic church and claims that the Orthodox church would be subjugated to Rome.  

That this is not an isolated case speaks to the fact that the messaging in Montenegrin and Serbian media is similar in nature to official ROC positions and those of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which were shared by Metropolitan Luka at a conference in Belgrade in 2024. He spoke of ROC and the orthodox churches in the Balkans as the “strongest opponents of ‘uniatism’ and the power ambitions of the Phanar.”  

The narrative is built on a mix of anti-Catholic sentiment and fears of Western interference, which is only exacerbated by current intra-Orthodox polarisation over the Ecumenical Patriarch’s grant of Ukrainian autocephaly.  

According to Tetiana Derkatch, a Ukrainian religious analyst, the topic of uniatism is used in Ukraine to fight the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and also to prevent the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from leaving the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.  

“The ROC is intimidating believers by saying that this would mean a betrayal of the faith and unia with Catholics,” she told AntiDisinfo.  

In this context, one should analyse the Russian Orthodox Church’s tactics in Ukraine, involving recurring attacks on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which Patriarch Kirill says is aligned with the “nationalistic agenda in Ukraine.”  

In the Western Balkans, nationalist voices in Serbia warn of imminent danger to Serbian Orthodox Church properties in Kosovo, which they say are under threat as a result of the Vatican’s expansionist approach in this part of Europe.  

The narrative framing about the role of the Roman Catholic Church, observed in Montenegro and Serbia, and amplified through Russian propaganda networks such as RT, Sputnik and social media, ultimately benefits Moscow’s regional and global ambitions, serving as an international ‘validation’ of its continuing narrative about Western attempts to erase Orthodoxy.  

 

Written by Dr Andreja Bogdanovski, analyst  

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