For many Russians, it is bad enough that Ukraine is pushing to join NATO and to eject the Russian Navy from its Black Sea port. But over the weekend, the confrontation over Ukraine's attempts to shrug off Russian influence reached an even more emotional pitch -- when the Ukrainian president sought to split his nation's church from Moscow's.
It was the latest round in an increasingly fraught tug of war over history, identity and power. The two governments have fought with many different political weapons -- from Ukraine's threat to join Russia's cold war rivals to Russia's ability to shut off the natural gas deliveries on which its neighbor depends. Both quickly made it clear that the struggle over the church -- traditionally an institution closely entwined with state power -- was at least as important.
On Saturday, President Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine chose the 1,020th anniversary of the advent of Christianity in the Slavic kingdom that predated Ukraine and Russia -- a date that each country claims as a founding event of its nationhood -- to issue a plea for Ukraine's Orthodox Christians to gain independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.
With Orthodox Church notables from around the world looking on, Mr. Yushchenko asked Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians, to bless the creation of an independent Ukrainian church -- "a blessing," he said on Saturday, "for a dream, for the truth, for a hope, for our state, for Ukraine."
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