Moscow is intensifying its rhetoric towards the Baltic region, casting a senior Orthodox figure as a hostile force allegedly seeking to undermine religious life in Lithuania and neighbouring states.

In a statement on January 12, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned that an “Antichrist” was now targeting Lithuania and the wider Baltic area. The language surfaced amid tensions triggered by the emergence of a new Orthodox community that has formally severed ties with Moscow.

Russian officials alleged that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople – long criticised by the Kremlin for having “split Orthodox Ukraine” – had turned what they described as his “dark gaze” on the Baltic States. 

“This "devil incarnate" is obsessed with ousting Russian Orthodoxy from the Baltic states,” the statement read. 

“Relying on ideological allies in the form of local nationalists and neo-Nazis, he is attempting to tear the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Orthodox Churches away from the Moscow Patriarchate,” it added. The SVR accused Patriarch Bartholomew of being backed by the British intelligence services. 

As reported by bne IntelliNews, a group of Orthodox believers in Lithuania broke from the Moscow Patriarchate after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Russian church leadership's support for the war.

The Lithuanian group went on to establish a separate community aligned with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, echoing a move taken by Ukraine's Orthodox community in 2019.

On January 12, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and the Foreign Ministry issued a joint message framed in apocalyptic terms, extending their warnings to developments not only in Lithuania but elsewhere in Europe.

Specifically, the statement claimed that Patriarch Bartholomew intends to autocephaly to the unrecognised Montenegrin Orthodox Church, in a blow to the Serbian Orthodox Church. 

Lithuania's Orthodox archdiocese, which remains under the Moscow Patriarchate, distanced itself from the inflammatory language, rejecting insults and stressing that it “consistently stands for peace, harmony and social unity, as an integral part of Lithuanian society”, independent Lithuanian news agency BNS and public broadcaster LRT.lt reported on January 14.

Patriarch Bartholomew has previously criticised the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church over the invasion of Ukraine.