Holy war: How Russia recruited Orthodox priests to sway Moldova's voters

Chisinau/London: Father Mihai Bicu, a priest in the Orthodox Church in Moldova, boarded the flight back home from Moscow with his head spinning from the unfamiliar attention lavished on him.

The 39-year-old and his party of a few dozen Moldovan clergymen had spent the previous week on an all-expenses-paid tour of some of the Russian Orthodox Church's holiest sites in September last year, Bicu told Reuters.

They were given vouchers worth 10,000 roubles ($120) by Russian Orthodox officials to spend in church shops that sell icons and souvenirs, he said. They were also treated to a series of lectures from theologians and historians that stressed Russia and former Soviet state Moldova were bound by centuries of tradition and a shared faith and must stick together against a morally corrupt West, the priest added.

Before they flew home, Bicu said he and many others in his group received debit cards issued by a Russian state bank which were handed to them in a monastery by non-church people whom he couldn't identify. They were told money would be transferred to them soon after they returned to Moldova.

There was a service the priests needed to render in return: When receiving the cards, Bicu said his party was told that in exchange for the money - he received about $1,200 upon his return - they were expected to create social media channels for their parishes in Moldova to warn their flocks about the dangers of the pro-Western government's pursuit of closer European integration.

Moldova, a small, deeply religious nation in eastern Europe, holds crucial parliamentary elections on Sunday that could thwart its advance towards EU membership. The country is uniquely caught between Russia and the West: while it gained formal independence from Moscow in 1991, its Orthodox church – a revered institution followed by the bulk of its 2.4 million population – remains a subordinate branch of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Bicu's party was among groups totalling several hundred people - primarily priests, plus lay clergy and others associated with Moldova's church - who accepted the all-expenses-paid trips to Moscow between June and October 2024, according to interviews with 15 clerics, including four who attended the pilgrimages, and an analysis of photos and videos of the visits posted online.

Once the trips ended, the online campaign began.

Almost 90 new Telegram channels have been established as the accounts of Moldovan Orthodox parishes over the past year, according to a Reuters review of social media data. Most channels have pumped out identical content on a near-daily basis, urging the faithful to oppose the government's pro-Western push in posts that have reached thousands of followers, the analysis found.

When asked about the flurry of new channels, Telegram said it was a politically neutral platform that respects peaceful free speech.

The online activity has been ramping up as Sunday's election nears. The source for most of the content, a channel called Sare şi Lumiña that is re-posted by the parish accounts, published over 600 messages between May and August, almost triple the number posted over the previous four months of this year.

The overarching message is that Moldova's traditional family values are under threat from an EU that will force citizens to embrace LGBT identities, degrade morals and destroy freedom of worship. While posts aren't explicitly pro-Russian, they echo the narratives pushed by opposition parties that advocate closer ties with Moscow.

"Today our country stands before a fateful choice. We are being advised to abandon faith, language, and our roots in exchange for foreign rules and 'European values'," said one message posted on September 18 by 39 of the parish channels reviewed. Russian is commonly spoken in the country alongside official language Romanian.

"Will Moldova keep its independence or become a bridgehead for outside interests? It depends on us – let's make the right choice on September 28."

The Kremlin, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and Moldovan Orthodox Church in Chisinau didn't respond to requests for comment for this article.

The targeting of the Moldovan church is part of a broader shadow war being waged by the Kremlin to influence the pivotal election, including online disinformation that pushes anti-Western narratives, cyberattacks on critical state infrastructure and clandestine support for politicians sympathetic to Moscow, according to the Moldovan government as well as many Western diplomats and think-tanks. Russia has rejected such allegations as unsubstantiated.

Reuters was able to establish that several political operatives and social media specialists affiliated with the Russian government played a key role in this drive to harness the Christian Orthodox network to sway Moldovan voters.

Facial-recognition analysis of videos posted on YouTube, plus interviews with Bicu and another priest on a separate trip, identified three Russians linked to President Vladimir Putin's ruling party among the hosts of Moldovan priests during four of the pilgrimages last year. Meanwhile, data extracted from closed online chatrooms in Telegram shows people similarly linked to the Kremlin are involved in operating and supplying content for the social media campaign.

The Moscow Patriarchate spoke publicly about the pilgrimages in September last year following Moldovan media reports that alleged the visits were part of a church campaign to turn priests against the EU. The reports contained no evidence of Russian state involvement. The church said in its statement that it was financing a program to bring Moldovan clergy to Russia to help impoverished priests and strengthen fraternal ties, with no political motives.

Archbishop Marchel, one of the leading figures of Moldova's church, told Reuters that any talk of a Russian campaign to influence the election was baseless and invented to mask the failures of Moldova's leaders to meet the needs of voters.

The clerics' trips to Russia were simply pilgrimages to holy sites, while the new social media channels are a local initiative by the Moldovan church, he said in an interview after leading Mass in the village of Slobozia-Măgura this month.

Marchel said bank cards were issued so clergy could buy religious paraphernalia at a church shop in Russia.

The Moldovan government, which has long accused the Kremlin of trying to influence its elections to boost parties more aligned with Russia, had a different take on the priestly trips.

"The most immoral feature of Russian electoral interference in elections in Moldova is the use of the most trusted institution: the church," said Stanislav Secrieru, national security adviser to Moldovan President Maia Sandu.

"Russia recruits and trains the priests during so-called all-inclusive pilgrimages, in order to turn religion into a weapon. After returning, the priests come to Moldova and use their influence in order to sow mistrust."

Archbishop: 'To Gay Europe, I say no'

The election this weekend is expected by many political analysts to be tight, with Sandu's ruling party at risk of losing its majority. Her government has pursued a policy of closer European integration, culminating in a referendum in October 2024 that saw Moldovans narrowly vote to enshrine the goal of joining the EU in the constitution.

By contrast, the leaders of Moldova's main Orthodox church speak frequently about the dangers of embracing Europe, and they promote close cultural ties with Russia. The head of the church is a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is led by Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Putin.

A spokesperson for the EU, which has accused Russia of trying to influence the election with "a web of cash, content and coercion", said it continued to support Moldova's ambitions to join the bloc.

Archbishop Marchel invoked Kirill several times at Slobozia-Măgura, where his arrival was greeted by priests in gold vestments wafting incense and female parishioners in headscarves lunging forward to receive a blessing. In his Mass, he asked God to soften the harshness of the Ukrainian people and guide them toward peace.

Speaking to Reuters afterwards about his differences with the ruling party, Marchel said the danger of integrating with Europe was Moldovans having to accept Western values such as permitting homosexuality.

"It's the worst sin," he said. "To cultural, Christian Europe, I say yes. To gay Europe, I say no. If you come with gays, then don't come at all."

Father Bicu, who served as senior deacon in Marchel's diocesan headquarters in Balti, northern Moldova, said he wasn't surprised when his superiors told him he'd be flying to Moscow on the pilgrimage in September last year.

Groups of about 50 people linked to the church, including some wives of clergy, had been making the same trip every week since June, he added. It was an unexpected reward for priests in Moldova, one of Europe's poorest countries, who must often eke out a living selling candles and icons to parishioners.

Reuters reviewed videos posted on YouTube from one of the pilgrimages and testimony from Bicu and a second priest who made a separate trip. Reporters identified three Russian political operatives accompanying priests on visits to holy sites.

In one video shot during an excursion to the Pokrovsky women's monastery near Moscow last August, a layman with a green jacket and ginger beard stood out among the clergymen, who were all clad in black cassocks.

Reuters identified the man as Artyom Starostin, using facial-recognition analysis that was manually verified by reviewing images from Starostin's profile on the website of Putin's United Russia party and from his personal Telegram account. Starostin is a United Russia member and former head of the party's executive committee in Vladimir region near Moscow, according to the website. He now leads the region's executive committee for the People's Front, a sister political movement to United Russia, that organization's Telegram channel shows. The movement was established at Putin's initiative to mobilize grassroots support for the ruling party and Kremlin policies.

Reuters also identified Alexander Ralnikov and Sergei Lazarev as having accompanied Moldovan priests on four visits to holy sites last year in total. Reuters showed their pictures to Bicu, who said he met both men, and the second cleric, who said he met Ralnikov.

Ralnikov is a United Russia member and former spokesman for the Kremlin-backed governor of Astrakhan region, while Lazarev is a onetime advertising executive and former local councillor for United Russia, according to the party site and online election data.

Starostin hung up on a Reuters reporter who contacted him about his involvement in the trips and didn't respond to text messages, while Lazarev didn’t answer Reuters questions.

Ralnikov said, in response to questions, that it was normal practice for civil society activists to assist with visits from Moldovan priests, and denied receiving any instructions from the Russian government. He also said it was usual for clergy to communicate via social media and that it was wrong to ascribe political motives. He added Moldovans themselves were worried about threats to traditional values, without any external prompting.

United Russia and the People's Front didn't respond to requests for comment for this article.

Monastery talk turns to media and money

On the third day of his trip, Bicu said his party was introduced to two people at the Trinity Lavra monastery complex. It was clear to the party they weren't clergy because they wore secular clothes and didn't have clerical titles, he added. One of the pair, who identified himself only as "Yuri", told the group they should create Telegram channels to chronicle their activities and pass messages to parishioners, Bicu said.

Later the same day, Bicu said, his party was split into smaller groups of a handful of people each. They were asked to sign forms issued by Russian state lender Promsvyazbank, and then handed debit cards from the bank in their names, according to the priest. He said they were told that, in return for the money that would be sent when they got home, the clergy must persuade their parishioners to vote against Moldova's pro-Western leaders in the upcoming referendum. If they did as instructed, they would receive further payments, Bicu added.

When he returned to Moldova, Bicu said he activated the card and was notified via online banking that about $1,200 had been transferred to his account. That's more than double the country's average monthly income, according to World Bank data. Bicu said he didn't keep records of the transfer.

Reuters couldn't establish how many priests or lay clergy who travelled to Russia were issued with bank cards or received payments on them.

The second priest, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive matter, said he and his wife were each given a Promsvyazbank card during a separate trip to Russia in autumn last year; between them, they subsequently received more than $800. The cleric showed his card to a Reuters reporter. He denied conditions were attached to the funds, saying they were part of the Moscow church's efforts to build bridges with Moldovan clergy.

Four other priests told Reuters they heard from many fellow clergy who made the Russian-funded trips that they were given bank cards and money on condition they push pro-Russian narratives with parishioners.

Promsvyazbank didn't respond to a request for comment about the bank cards.

Back with $1,200: What did Father Bicu do?

Ultimately, Bicu did not implement the plan devised for him in Moscow. A few weeks after the trip, he quit the church and defected to a rival branch of the Orthodox church aligned with Romania. He said he left because he disagreed with financial and personnel decisions made by the leaders of his diocese, adding that he kept the $1,200.

Other clergy did execute the online plan.

On October 26 last year, for example, the team of clerics at the Church of St Panteleimon the Great Martyr in Balti launched a channel on Telegram.

A member of the team at St Panteleimon told Reuters the parish received the help of an IT specialist, who he said was a Russian-speaker from outside Moldova, to launch the service. The team member said he was unable to provide more specific details.

Soon after launch, posts began to appear on the channel that no one in the parish team had published, according to the team member. The posts were politically charged, he said, relating to LGBT issues and to allegations that neighbour and EU member Romania is trying to cleave Moldova away from the Russian church.

The parish team member said they deleted the mystery posts. Fresh ones appeared, though. The account was corroborated by two other people who help run the parish's social media. One of the people showed Reuters a screenshot from a closed part of the Telegram account listing the channel's administrators, including someone they didn't know with the Telegram username "Petr Petry".

The photos on Petr Petry's Telegram account showed a man with face obscured and a tattoo on his hand. The tattoo, as well as several close variations of the same username, match pictures posted online of Gleb Kuznetsov, a 24-year-old Russian who used to serve in his country's navy and after that worked as a car mechanic, according to Russian employment and police records.

In photos from a black tie event in December last year posted on social media by Kuznetsov and another attendee, Kuznetsov is seen posing with two members of Starostin's team from Vladimir region's People's Front. In another photo, dated October 2024 and posted by a member of that team, Kuznetsov can be seen posing with Ralnikov and Lazarev – two of the operatives who helped host Moldovan priests.

When Reuters phoned Kuznetsov, he called back from a different Telegram account that was listed as administrator of a second parish channel. He denied he was administrator of the channels and said he was just helping out by posting content out of concern for Moldova and the church.

Other channels were mushrooming up at the same time.

Between August 2024 and May this year, 86 Telegram channels set up as the accounts of Moldovan Orthodox parishes have accrued about 11,500 subscribers in total, according to a Reuters analysis using Telegram data.

The analysis found that more than three-quarters of the accounts have heavily re-posted content from Sare şi Lumiña – or Salt and Light – which is a national channel created in June 2024 that focuses on the Moldovan Orthodox Church. Its messages reached more than 27,000 people last month, including its own subscribers and reposts.

Sare şi Lumiña does not say on any of its platforms who controls it or if it is affiliated to any organization. Two people listed publicly as administrators, when contacted by Reuters, did not respond or denied involvement. The Moldovan and Russian churches didn't address queries about whether the service is linked to them.