Bartholomew I of Constantinople

"What is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy, it is a disgrace that will stigmatize for ever those who caused it, those who turned out to have no fear of God."

"We are convinced that the Russian people, at least our Christian Orthodox brothers, can not agree with what is happening to the detriment of their neighboring Ukrainian people"

"The Church and the State leadership in Russia cooperated in the crime of aggression, and share the responsibility for the resulting crimes, like the shocking abduction of Ukrainian children. They have provoked enormous suffering not only to the Ukrainian people, but also to the Russians, who count more than 100,000 casualties, and the responsibility for terrible atrocities."

"On January 12, 2026, the press bureau of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued one of the more unusual ever to emanate from a state organ, lurid even by contemporary Russian standards, concerning His All Holiness Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. … The SVR’s allegation of schismatic activity on the part of Bartholomew I refers primarily to the “,” or decree, signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch on January 5, 2019, granting (self-governance) to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a move which caused the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to break communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Yet the tomos was hardly without justification. … There could be no more complete repudiation of the Russkiy Mir than Patriarch Bartholomew’s pained reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—“This is the theology that the sister Church of Russia began to teach, trying to justify an unjust, unholy, unprovoked, diabolical war against a sovereign and independent country”—and his tomos granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine."