I'm very sorry for the wall of text below but I feel like I'm going mad. A person close to me sent me this "investigation", clearly expecting me to applaud it because I come from Ukraine. It consists of a video, a longer article, and an intervew, and I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole looking into it, and the more I read the more disgusting it got, to the point that I'm considering ending that relationship.
I'll start with the video, and the bias is obvious from the very start: from upbeat Hollywood blockbuster music for NATO excercises, to cliche spy themes for shots of the Orthodox church. Please pay attention to the music all the way through!
The story is set up with a Swedish Karen saying it "doesn't feel right" to her that the church has a fence, so she wants it shut down as a matter of national security.
The worst part comes in the second half of the video, where "investigative journalists" come to harass parishioners. They first approach a woman who explains that it's simply a regular Orthodox church attended by people of many nationalities. She's visibly upset by the accusations (local politicians are calling to expropriate the church as a matter of national security, the video also mentions several earlier attempts by journalists to access the church and confront the pirest with accusations of espionage), and another parishioner steps in, asking the journalists in a polite, almost timid voice "Excuse me, where are you from?" and to the woman, "No, don't talk to them, what for... (intelligible) bless." This is dubbed with a harsh, commanding "What are you doing? Stop! Don't talk!", which is not at all what he says and turns a concerned parishioner into a soldier-like figure issuing orders (please go to 11:19 in the video and compare the tone, it's so blatant)...
It gets worse: they send a Russian speaking journalist to attend the liturgy, with a filming phone hanging around his neck, despite very clear "no filming" signs - which is extremely common, I travelled in many Eastern European countries and you are generally not allowed to film inside Orthodox churches. The footage is framed as if they are about to uncover a hidden spy cell, but all they capture is a regular Orthodox church, so they add dramatic, ominous music to make it seem spooky.
The narration informs us "it is indeed an Orthodox church - one where suspicion rules"... Why? Because the girl selling candles asks the visitor if it's his first time and if he's from Vasteras, in a very sweet tone. Then she notices the phone on record and gently reminds him that filming is forbidden. She asks if he's Orthodox and he says no, at which point she gets flustered and explains the church is not open for tourists. She very politely asks him to stop filming, he pretends to comply but keeps recording through a hole in his bag. The only thing he gets is a routine Orthodox service.
Finally they are asked to leave, and they claim it's because the presence of non-Orthodox visitors was a problem, but I suspect it's not the whole truth because they weren't asked to leave when it was discovered they are filming, or that they are not even Orthodox, they were allowed to stay for the cermon.
There are two hints suggesting what happened, the first is the narration accompanying shots of the cermon: "Father Makarenko is there, but it's impossible to approach him", and the second one is in the article:
When FRANCE 24 attended a Sunday service in Vasteras to confront the priest with the accusations, the team was asked to leave when congregation members discovered a hidden camera.
To me this sounds like they tried to approach and confront the priest during an active cermon. There is a gap in the video and it cuts to them with phone out of the bag and recording openly again, being asked to leave by another priest.
The video closes with the line, "These are the only images ever filmed by a journalist inside the church. And perhaps the last, because Swedish authorities are determined to shut it down".
So... What did they investigate if the Swedish authorities are already determined to shut down the church? It really seems all they did was harass a religious minority (who were all quite lovely to them despite being hounded by local politicians and journalists), record them against their will, record inside an Orthodox church against the custom, interrupt the liturgy, and found absolutely no wrongdoing. They left quite pleased with themselves, added some ominous music to make the Russians look spooky, and published this as "investigative journalism".
What kind of person watches this and thinks "this is quality journalism, I need to share it!"
Below I dig into the shoddy reporting that is supposed to justify their invasion of the parish, way deeper than is reasonable, so I don't expect anyone to actually read through it, I'm just posting this for my own sanity.
Part 1 - the suspicious church
The article says it's suspicious that the church was built next to an active military runway, it's also suspicious of the tall spire. But looking at the dates and facts presented in the article:
- The runway used to host Swedish Air Force but was decommissioned in 1983, almost 30 years before the church project even began.
- The Patriarchate applied to build a church in Vasteras in 2012, at a time when Ukraine had a Moscow-friendly government, Swedish–Russian relations were relatively stable, and NATO membership for Sweden was not even on the table.
- In the interview with Russia's ambassador, he says "It was not the people of the Orthodox community who decided where the temple would be situated, it was the city of Vasteras." - but the article never fact-checks this.
- The church spire is entirely in line with usual Orthodox architecture and the building permit was granted legally. The article mentions some "red flags": "one-man municipal errors", "miscommunication on a local level", "alarming mishaps" but it never actually specifies what they were, let alone investigates them. I don't understand what they are even alleging... That the Vasteras municipality in 2012 had a Russian intelligence mole who pushed the project through?
- Sweden only reactivated the runway for military exercises in 2024, after joining NATO, 12 years after the location was given to the church.
- It also treats the fence and security cameras as suspicious, but for a church in a secluded forest area, this doesn't seem that weird. Please also compare how the authors of the article present the fence versus how it looks from a normal viewpoint.
Part 2 - the suspicious priest
- They allege building contractor's links to organised crime, and priests sentence for fraud, which could very well be true but has nothing to do with spying.
- The building of the church was sponsored by Rosatom - this is public knowledge, as the authors write Rosatom boasted about their contribution to the church in their press release, and again, it doesn't mean the church was built for spying.
- They find it suspicious that the No. 2 of the Russian embassy in Sweden attended the inauguration of the first Moscow Patriarchate church built in Sweden. They mention he "has been identified by Swedish investigative programme Uppdrag Granskning as a Russian spy", but when you follow the link it's a sensationalist TV show and Lyapin is the only "suspect" they can't even accuse of a specific affiliation:
According to two different sources within the western intelligence and counterintelligence services he is affiliated with the structures engaged with espionage, but he can't be connected to any particular intelligence service. According to the Danish intelligence sources he could work for the SVR. Dossier Center also suspects that he could be working for the SVR but doesn't have enough information to say for sure.
Well, with accusations so waterproof I'm sure the church is a spy cell based on him being present at the inauguration. Belarussian embassy official attended as well, even though he seemingly is not a spy... Or is he?
- The priest himself received a medal from the Russian security service in relation to opening the church - again this happened completely in the open, with pictures of the medal proudly presented in the news article on the official Patriarchate website. Of course the idea that an active Russian spy would openly brandish medals from SVR is just next level of stupid, but let's quickly check what this medal actually is. A very quick Yandex search found other recipients of this highly nefarious award:
- On the official SVR site, listed recipients are a journalist who wrote a series of articles about SVR, two businessmen who sponsored a TV series about a WW2 intelligence officer, a sculptor who made busts of historical intelligence officers, and a painter who created a project about Russian intelligence.
- A journalist reporting on declassified intelligence materials.
- Another sculptor for a statue of a WW2 intelligence officer.
- A talk show host for an episode which featured the head of SVR.
- A small town official according to scornful comments for naming a school after a WW2 intelligence officer instead of fixing vital infrastructure :D
It seems fairly clear none of those people are spies. This medal is not for espionage, it's a PR award for boosting the Russian intelligence service's public image, presented openly and with quite some fanfare. It didn't take long to find out, but investigators seemed more interested in stringing together various suspicions than actually investigating them, which will become a running theme.
Part 3 - Father Angel and the Strindbergs
So there are those two stories they bring up I guess as supporting evidence, to show how the Moscow Patriarchate operates. Both of them are about the Patriarchate attempting to take over other churches which is not at all what happened in Vasteras, where they built their own church from scratch, but I guess everything goes when you're writing a smear piece.
- Father Angel story is the first truly disturbing bit in this whole mess. A priest recounts being "bombarded with dozens of membership requests" overnight, presumably from "Russian agents", and resisted this purported takeover by rejecting them, even acknowledging "not everyone was an agent" but offering no evidence any were. This is presented in the article and the video as a courageous act of resistance against the Russian state, rather than ethnic profiling of his parish. It really felt like there's more to the story, and again a very quick Yandex search showed there is: https://russkiymir.ru/publications/256980/
Turns out this is indeed a story about a takeover, but in the opposite direction - it's about how the 400 years old Russian church was taken over by the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia (which for some reason they always shorten to just "Bulgarian" in the article and the video), and how those who weren't happy with this were expelled from the church. This puts the story about a priest who refuses people from his congregation based on ethnicity in a completely different light, doesn't it?
Had they given this a little search they'd also find how despite all efforts to distance himself from Russia, Father Angel himself is a victim of the very same russophobia they stoke, with businesses refusing to even sell chairs to his church because that would "support Russian interests", and his church getting vandalised with writings like "Putin is a murderer"...
- Russophobia is a great segway into this next bit because oh boy, do we have that here. The story goes, Moscow Patriarchate and an unnamed "another tenant, a hyper conservative Christian group" tried to oust the original church owners, the Strindberg family, but lost after 4 years and a legal battle. I'm happy to believe that part but the rest is just out of this world. Strindberg junior says while the church was run by the Russian Orthodox priest he managed to get in and "found a CCTV camera in the back-room of the church, and as soon as he dismantled it, he was approached by a man wearing military fatigues" who "spoke Russian and appeared as if from nowhere." Again what is even the allegation here? That a detachment of uniformed Russian army was stationed in this small Swedish church? How does this get reported without anyone challenging it?
Then we have accusations of strategic placement again, with a wide view of Stockholm, close to a large bridge which is a critical transport corridor, and next to Stockholm's biggest water reservoir... I have a question, where are Russians supposed to pray though? They can't build a church next to an airfield, or a bridge, or a highway, or a water reservoir, or just with a view of the city for fucks sake, and if they try to join other Orthodox churches it's a hostile takeover, so what are they supposed to do?
Here's what takes the russophobic cake though:
"If this would blow up, we'd be in big trouble," remarks Strindberg the elder, nodding towards the bridge...
I'm sorry what? Are they suggesting the Russian Orthodox Church is blowing up bridges in Sweden now? Is this kind of scaremongering about a religious minority responsible journalism? Again, what kind of journalist just puts this in without challenging it?
I can't see this whole thing as anything other than a smear job against a religious minority commissioned by the Swedish security apparatus. They reactivated an old Air Force base for NATO exercises and realised the Russian church is now inconvenient, so they are getting journo hacks to write slander that stokes bigotry and hatred. And it works, just read the YouTube comments.
One last tidbit that didn't fit anywhere in the main post: in the video, Patriarch Kirill's cermon is described as "warlike", but the translation is misleading on purpose:
May God prevent the victory in Ukraine of the forces of evil, who have always sought to fight against Russia's unity and its church.
His actual speech however is much less "warlike", especially if one understands the difference between Russia (the modern state) and Rus' (a historical and cultural term encompassing the Eastern Slavic world: Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia). Here's the real translation:
God forbid that our dear, brotherly Ukraine be used so that the evil forces, which have always fought against the unity of Rus' and the Russian Church, would prevail.
This is still clearly supportive of Russia in Ukraine, but their translation reframes it as nationalist rather than cultural/religious, changes a plea to not let Ukraine be manipulated into a plea to not let Ukraine win, and suggests Ukraine is part of Russia which is not the case in the actual cermon.
Exactly, it's not even a political statement, it doesn't get more mainstream than Gamers Nexus: https://youtu.be/qPMptuEokPQ?t=140