This defeat will cost Russia

This defeat will cost Russia dearly, as more than 90 percent of the population of increasingly pro-Western Moldova identify as Orthodox. This further undercuts the Moscow patriarchate’s claim to speak for all the Orthodox peoples of the post-Soviet space (Window on Eurasia, October 22, 2018; see EDM, August 12, 2021, August 17, 2023). These worries have been intensified by the specific conditions of religious life in Moldova. A ban on the Moscow church would boost the standing of the Romanian Orthodox Church there, make it the dominant religious organization in Moldova ufabet