02/07/2026 10:10 - 19:30

HALL: Pola - AT12

Contact: Napolitano M.

Chair: Bogdan O., Napolitano M.

This panel builds upon and expands the discussion initiated by the volume Religious and Identity-Based Roots of the War in Ukraine, published by Routledge in January 2026. The panel explores the Russo-Ukrainian War through its deep historical roots, religious dimensions, and identity-based conflicts, examining how religious narratives intersect with state power and identity formation in both post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.
A crucial focus is the 2018-2019 recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's autocephaly by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, representing a fundamental rupture in Orthodox unity with profound geopolitical implications. The Moscow Patriarchate considered this act a direct challenge to its authority and to its historical and traditional relationship with Ukraine. Papers will examine the Russkyi Mir ideology and how this notion shapes Church-State relations and provides theological frameworks for political objectives, alongside the concept of political autocephalies and the relationship between ecclesiastical and political authority in both countries.
The panel will further discuss the role of religious minorities in the conflict and the state's regulation of religious pluralism in both Russia and Ukraine, examining Eastern Europe as a crossroads of Christian denominations and European conflicts. Public history represents a key analytical dimension: papers will investigate monumentalization, commemorative practices, and artistic production as means through which competing historical memories are constructed, with contemporary art serving as sites for collective trauma processing and contestation of official discourse.
The panel aims to trace the historical, religious, political, and cultural dynamics of the conflict, examining their evolution and transformations to illuminate how these historical trajectories inform contemporary hostilities.