Head of Russian Orthodox Church ‘was a spy for KGB’

Warsaw: The head of the Russian Orthodox Church worked as a spy for the KGB in the 1970s, according to newly declassified Swiss records.

Between ski trips to the Alps, Patriarch Kirill reportedly used a posting to Switzerland’s World Council of Churches in 1971 to collect information for the Soviet spy agency.

Now a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, Kirill, born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev, arrived in Geneva as an ambitious 24-year-old looking to make his mark for the Soviet Union.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, front, leaves after his meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, left back in Moscow in 2014.Credit:AP

During the Cold War, religion was treated with suspicion in the USSR and used mainly as a tool to promote the Kremlin’s worldview. Clergymen often had to become KGB agents before they were allowed to travel abroad.

Code-named Mikhailov, Kirill’s mission was to manipulate council members into criticising the US, according to Swiss newspapers Sonntagszeitung and Le Matin Dimanche, which quoted declassified police records.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill delivers a Christmas service in Moscow, Russia, on January 6, Orthodox Christmas Eve.Credit:AP

“I always had a feeling… with Kirill that he was looking for information,” one anonymous Russian exile who lived in Geneva said. “He was very friendly but asked a lot of questions.”

Kirill’s nephew, also a Russian Orthodox priest, has denied the reports.

Neither the Russian Orthodox Church nor the World Council of Churches, an umbrella group of 352 different churches, have commented.

Kirill, who became the church’s leader in 2009, has backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and called on Russians to fight to defend “the Fatherland”.

The Telegraph, London

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