Priest rejects Russian ties after Danish youth group expulsions

A priest at Copenhagen’s Russian Orthodox Aleksander Nevskij Church has rejected allegations of links between his congregations and the Russian authorities, DR reports. The controversy follows the expulsion of 11 people linked to Russian Orthodox churches in Copenhagen and Aarhus from the Danish People’s Party Youth.

The expulsions were reported by Berlingske and Kristeligt Dagblad. Kenneth Kristensen Berth, the Danish People’s Party’s head of secretariat and organisation, previously told DR that the group had held prayer meetings and tried to place members in prominent positions within the youth organisation.

Flemming Splidsboel, a senior researcher focusing on Russia at DIIS, said there was a relatively high probability that the case involved an attempt to infiltrate a Danish youth party on behalf of Russia.

“What is crucial to establish is whether the Russian Orthodox Church made an active effort to control these men,” Splidsboel said.

He also said ties between Vladimir Putin’s government and the Russian Orthodox Church had strengthened in recent years.

“It is naive to believe that there can be any distance between the two. The church is now also an instrument of the Russian state,” he said.

Mihail Sukhanov, a priest at the Aleksander Nevskij Church, rejected the allegations. Several of the expelled people attended the church. Sukhanov declined an interview but answered questions in writing.

He said his congregations belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, or ROCOR, and had no connection with the Russian authorities. The church, he said, was administered by a synod of bishops based in New York.

“The allegations that our church supports the war in Ukraine are groundless,” Sukhanov wrote, adding that ROCOR had broken with the church in Russia in 1917.

“My congregations have never received money or other support from the Russian state,” he wrote.

Sukhanov also denied knowing that a group of men from his congregations had allegedly tried to infiltrate the Danish People’s Party Youth.

He said he knew four people who were ordinary churchgoers and that his conversations with them had dealt exclusively with the spiritual life of Orthodox Christians.

Asked whether someone could belong to the Russian Orthodox Church without supporting the Russian regime, Sukhanov called the question foolish.

“We are a church, not a political party. We do not ask people at the door what their views are on anything. Our task is to preach the Gospel of Christ, neither more nor less,” he wrote.

Sukhanov also denied advising any of the expelled members to infiltrate the Danish People’s Party in support of pro-Russian interests. He said he had advised people only on spiritual life in an Orthodox Christian context and that secular politics did not particularly concern him.