"The Russian Church-State Compact " (see related A | B | C)

The Patriarchate of Moscow is subservient to the State (Mr. Putin). 

During the former Russian empire there never was a Russian Patriarchate. The czars avoided the possiblity of a Patriarch opposing their rules. The Moscow Patriarchate arose during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Following its repression during the Stalinist era, the Moscow Patriarchate was re-established to boost the morale of the USSR troops fighting the Germans. Following WW2, the Moscow Patriarchate served as an arm of the KGB and presently continues its subservient role to the rulers of the Kremlin. In fact, the Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, elected in 1990, publicly confessed that his Church, and himself personally, engaged in such compromises (a euphemism that fails to stress that others lost their lives for their contributions to the Communist regime). Since its inception, the Moscow Patriarchate belonged to Orthodox Churches under the Constantinople Patriarchate. With the advent of Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate abandoned such union and became exclusively Russian. The title he claims "His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Serbs, Macedonians, among others, since Rus refers to populations and areas many centuries prior to the existence of Moscow). 

In Ukraine, the clergy subject to the Moscow Patriarchate, often native Russians refusing to speak Ukrainian, have demonstrably engaged in promotion of political aims dictated by the Kremlin. Ukrainian "pro" Russian Presidents granted the Moscow Patriarchate many historical churches and not so to the Ukrainian Orthodox churches adherent to the Constantinople Patriarchage.

The Moscow Orthodox Church beatified Czar Nicholas II as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, also referred to as Saint Nicholas the Martyr. Such gestures bridge seek "forgive and forget" in an effort to consolidade the legacies (and crimes) of czars, Bolsheviks who murdered the Imperial Family, Stalinists holocausts including the starvation of millions of Ukrainians and crimes such as those associated with Chornobyl by those who followed them.