Russian Orthodox Church is Funding, recruiting and training for Private Military Company like Wagner

Reality is stranger than fiction! Phony crusades in the name of God!

"In its 2020 report, “Moscow’s Mercenary Wars: The Expansion of Russian Private Military Companies” (PMCs), the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies detailed the growth in the use of PMCs to fight the Kremlin’s wars and highlighted the links between these companies and Russia’s military and intelligence apparatus. ...

Earlier this year MOLFAR published a catalog of Russian PMCs, which identified 37 separate mercenary groups operating in as many as 34 different countries with more than two thirds of their funding coming from the state with the rest from oligarchs and other unspecified sources.

Buried in this report was reference to a PMC called Andreyevsky Krest (St Andrew’s Cross) which it said was funded by donations collected by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) from its congregations throughout the federation. ...

Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) that the Andreyevsky Krest was a full-blown PMC operating from its base located at the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral in St Petersburg. ... 

Representatives of the cathedral were said to be actively recruiting parishioners, particularly those with previous military experience, for service in Ukraine. ...
... The SBU asserted that “to disguise combat training, their organizers train their ‘recruits’ exclusively within the walls of the cathedral and at special training grounds in Russia.” ...

The SBU said that this was yet another criminal activity undertaken by the ROC that would be investigated. Ukraine has initiated proceedings against 68 representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Russia’s subordinate church on Ukrainian territory, for crimes including high treason, collaboration and providing aid and comfort to agents of the aggressor country. ..."

Russian Orthodox Church Funding Private Military Company