Moscow on Monday dramatically escalated its feud with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople by accusing the latter – the primus inter pares of the world’s Christian Orthodox Churches – of colluding with “local nationalists and neo-Nazis” to lure Churches in the Baltics from the Moscow Patriarchate’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The highly offensive language, posted by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) press bureau, are a continuation of Moscow’s rage at the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I over recognition (autocephaly) of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in January 2019.

Previously, the Orthodox parishes and bishoprics in Ukraine were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Russian Patriarchate in Moscow and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch. The “granting of the tomos of autocephaly”, as the official recognition is called, incensed the powerful Russian Church and the Kremlin.

Besides accusing the Istanbul-Patriarchate of seeking to sway the Orthodox faithful in the Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – away from Moscow, the Russian intelligence service also claimed that British secret services also “… support by all means the activities of Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew in displacing the Russian Orthodox Church… The British secret services actively support him, fueling Russophobic sentiments in European countries,” read the announcement on the SVR website.

The announcement pointed to “British secret services” in support of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and against Russian interests but avoided any mention of American services, harking back to the pre-Cold War days when Soviet Russia viewed London as its main ideological opponent.

The specific post reads:

“The Ecumenical Patriarch is relying on his ideological allies represented by local nationalists and neo-Nazis in an attempt to detach the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Orthodox Churches from the Moscow Patriarchate by luring away their priests and flocks into puppet religious structures that have been artificially created by Constantinople,” using the ancient and medieval name of the Bosporus metropolis instead of modern-day Istanbul.