Orthodox Christianity and Multiple Modernities: The Case of the Russian-Ukrainian War

This study explores the ways in which two Orthodox churches (the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine) construct their own versions of modernity while reacting to the Russian-Ukrainian war. One tries to develop its own idiosyncratic and strongly anti-Western, but still essentially modern project, while the other aligns itself with Western modernity, albeit also on a selective basis. Theoretically, the article draws from the literature about multiple modernities, arguing that this framework can shed new light not only on these religious actors’ attitudes to Western modernity, but also on the internal competition within the Orthodox world. Methodologically, the study builds on a qualitative discourse analysis of online communication of the two churches in the period of January 2022-December 2023.