Orthodox Leader Calls Putin: Antichrist After Cathedral Strike
The words came hours after Russian missiles struck the 11th-century cathedral complex during overnight attacks that killed at least eleven across Ukraine.
The golden domes of Kyiv's historic cathedral stood in flames this morning, and with them burned something deeper than stone and timber. As rescue workers pulled survivors from the rubble of what had been one of Ukraine's most sacred Orthodox sites, Metropolitan Epiphanius — head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — made a declaration that would have been unthinkable four years ago: Vladimir Putin, he said, was the Antichrist.
The words came hours after Russian missiles struck the 11th-century cathedral complex during overnight attacks that killed at least eleven across Ukraine. But the timing felt deliberate, almost cruel. Just yesterday, Donald Trump had concluded an hour-long call with Putin, telling the Russian leader it was "vital" he end the war and offering to help broker peace. The cathedral burned while diplomats spoke of new beginnings.
What makes Epiphanius's words cut so deep is not their theological weight — though that matters to millions of Orthodox believers — but their political impossibility. For centuries, the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches were bound together, sharing saints and liturgies and the assumption of spiritual brotherhood. Putin has consistently framed this war as a defense of Orthodox civilization against Western decadence. To have Ukraine's highest Orthodox authority call him the embodiment of evil is to shatter that narrative completely.
The cathedral that burned was not just any church. Built during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, it had survived the Mongol invasions, Stalin's purges, and Nazi occupation. Its destruction feels almost archeological — the erasure of a shared past that can never be rebuilt exactly as it was.
This is happening while the G7 summit opens in Évian-les-Bains, where leaders will spend the week discussing Ukraine's future alongside a surprise US-Iran agreement that has already sent oil prices tumbling. The contrast is stark: in France, diplomats broker deals over wine and Alpine views; in Kyiv, firefighters battle blazes that smell of centuries.
What Epiphanius understood, standing among the smoking ruins, is that some wounds change you permanently. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine declared its independence from Moscow in 2019, but independence is different from separation. This morning, with Putin branded as Antichrist by the spiritual leader of his supposed Orthodox brothers, that separation became something harder and more final.
The flames in Kyiv will be extinguished. The cathedral can be rebuilt, stone by stone, icon by icon. But trust, once called evil, rarely returns to what it was before the burning.
