Scene from MOC protest against gender equality laws, 29.06.2023 | Photo: Bojan Blazevski, Meta.mk
This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.
The coverage by Liturgija.mk is disproportionate with news and reporting affecting the religious developments in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories by Russia. Some of its reporting, effectively claims that Donetsk is part of Russia and can be seen as a direct effort to align public perception in North Macedonia with Russia’s territorial claims. Liturgija.mk’s strong reliance on Moscow-friendly sources such as OrthoChristian, often through direct, unchecked translation into Macedonian, accelerates the development of public opinion sympathetic to Russia’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine
Author: Dr. Andreja Bogdanovski, Analyst
Moscow – Skopje ecclesiastical realignment
Since the Serbian Orthodox Church decree (“tomos” in the church parlance) granted autocephaly to the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid (MOC-OA) in June 2022, Macedonian hierarchs turned their gaze to Moscow and away from Constantinople.
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) made a well-calculated and timely decision when it recognized the Macedonian autocephaly shortly after (August 2022), without raising any identity-related concerns, thereby gaining sympathy amongst the top echelons of the MOC-OA and Macedonian believers.
Recently, with the Russian Church’s recognition of the MOC-OA, communication with the Moscow Patriarchate has increased quite notably (see here and here). This included high-level contacts, which soon translated into opening the gates for the Russian propaganda in North Macedonia, to a great extent bypassing the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has traditionally been seen as the central hub for Russia’s ‘soft power’ across the Western Balkans.
MOC-OA support for Kremlin-aligned narratives
The Russian recognition of the MOC-OA came six months after Russia launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine. When some influential Orthodox churches issued a condemnation of the war (see here and here), Archbishop Stefan, instead of condemning Patriarch Kirill’s support for the war, offered a new partnership with the ROC in this part of Southeast Europe, allowing the Russian presence to penetrate Macedonian church circles.
The now vastly improved high-level Church ties between Skopje and Moscow mirror each other in the communications and media sphere. The Moscow Patriarchate has shown a growing interest in expanding its work in the publishing sector, as evidenced by the visits of the head of the Publications Department of the Diocese of Skopje to Moscow in October, as well as in 2024.
Moscow’s locking of the MOC-OA into its orbit through the recognition of its autocephaly came with expectations that the Macedonian church should readjust its ‘foreign policy’ to mirror the Moscow Patriarchate’s most pressing priority, which is safeguarding its church interests in Ukraine, expecting full support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
Authorities in Kyiv, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church, consider the UOC to be canonically attached to the Russian Orthodox Church, despite its efforts to present itself as independent.
Several official decisions and statements indicate a growing alignment between the MOC-OA with Russian and UOC messaging. In June 2025, Archbishop Stefan congratulated Metropolitan Onufry on his name day and described the Ukrainian state’s treatment of the UOC as ‘persecution’, directly using the language used by Moscow (as can be seen below).
“There is no mention of Kiev’s scrapping its legislative restrictions on using the Russian language in various spheres of life, cancelling measures that infringe the rights of ethnic minorities, and ending the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church“ as Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on the 31st of October 2025.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, also used the same rhetoric:
The MOC-OA Holy Synod issued a statement claiming that the UOC had been “administratively banned” through Law 8371, asserting that the legislation deprives “millions of believers” of religious freedom.
The ROC welcomed the move of the MOC-OA, publishing the information on its Department for External Church Relations website. This indicates that the move was coordinated to strengthen the message and present it in a way that shows ‘global Orthodoxy’ supports the UOC and the ROC.
The passage of the law in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada in August 2025 did not automatically end the activities of the UOC. The church was granted (initially) nine months to detach itself from the ROC structures after the law was enacted.
In March 2023, the MOC-OA refused a proposal to concelebrate with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), reinforcing a narrative that delegitimizes the OCU’s canonical status.
The head of the MOC did not take an active position condemning Patriarch Kirill’s ‘Holy War’ declaration of 2024. While most of the other churches actively isolate Patriarch Kirill as a form of protest, the MOC-OA sent a delegation for an extended visit to the ROC in October.
Marjan Nikolovski, a long-time observer of ecclesiastical politics and editor of Religija.mk (a religion news portal), told Antidisinfo.net that the dissemination of Russian church propaganda is not coincidental, as Russia lacks significant influence in Macedonian politics and the economic sector.
Many of the current pro-Russian comments of the MOC-OA hierarchy were not seen only two or three years ago, he stated. The church is used for disseminating propaganda to affirm the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state in Macedonia positively.
He explains that this narrative ultimately seeks to persuade the public that Russia “will save Orthodoxy from the ‘evil’ West,” while simultaneously promoting Russian values as part of the same process.
Liturgija.mk as a gateway for Russian church propaganda
Russia considers Ukraine part of the “Russian World” space, which includes Ukraine and Belarus as a core group of countries where the Russian Orthodox Church promotes Russification of society.
This doctrine denies the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity and the right of Ukrainians to chart their own future. When Patriarch Kirill declared the Russian aggression in Ukraine as a “Holy War” in March last year, he also sketched out the contours of the ‘Russian world’.
The borders of the Russian World (Ruskii Mirr) as a spiritual and cultural-civilizational phenomenon are significantly wider than the state borders of both the present Russian Federation and the greater historical Russia, the declaration stated.
Since 2022, across the Orthodox landscape, news portals that cover Orthodoxy from a perspective close to Moscow’s positions have mushroomed.
In North Macedonia, one such portal is Liturgija.mk, which started publishing stories in late 2023. The website functions as an extended arm of the MOC-OA, without fully disclosing this.
A simple search of the Macedonian registered domains reveals that the portal is registered under the MOC-OA, and the listed address is the primary address of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
The Antidisinfo.net team contacted both the editor-in-chief of Liturgija.mk and the central offices of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric to ask about the website’s connection to them and why it is registered in their name. However, they had not responded by the time of publication.
Nevertheless, the website presents a distorting image of the ecclesiastical situation in Ukraine, relying almost entirely on sources close to the Russian as well as to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been historically tied to Moscow
While sporadically the website uses official sources and some reputable publications, the vast majority of its content covering the Ukrainian war and the UOC is based on stories published by OrthoChristian, an English version of its Russian source www.pravoslavie.ru, as well as Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ) www.spzh.eu – a media outlet which has been inaccessible in Ukraine, and over a dozen individuals associated with placed under sanctions.
On the Russian social media site VKontakte (VK), OrthoChristian presents itself as a “site under the auspices of the Patriarchal Cultural Council, producer of the most popular religious site in Russia, Pravoslavie.Ru.”
Source: VKontakte
Liturgija.mk maintains an active Facebook account (6,2K followers) where it shares articles originally published on the website.
Searching about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, one would see a framing that amplifies a single faction while muting the rest (narrative framing), which closely mirrors the main narratives of the Russian church and the Kremlin. It is intended to shape Macedonian public opinion and that of MOC-OA clergy of systemic state persecution against Orthodoxy, while championing the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as its protector.
The website states that its primary focus is to inform readers about church and societal developments in North Macedonia and the world and to publish “competent and balanced analyses of church situations, to inspire your stance (as a reader) on current church topics.”
However, it is quite difficult to find a “balanced analysis” on Ukraine, as the website nearly always republishes and translates material from ROC-friendly sites, without providing insights from other independent sources or publications.
The texts on Ukraine therefore have predominantly recurring elements, which is known as narrative flooding, which is when a medium constantly repeats the same messaging with intense reporting on a particular issue, in this case, the Ukrainian church persecution. This can be seen in the following areas:
- Contesting the right of Ukrainians for an independent Orthodox Church, separate from the Russian (see examples here and here)
- Uses derogatory language, such as calling the OCU schismatics
- Offers articles with a high emotional charge involving church closures and beatings
- Attacking the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s newly gained autocephaly (see here and here)
- Attacks the historical rights and prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch to grant autocephaly and discredits him as pro-Catholic
As a consequence of this biased coverage, readers, which also includes clergy in North Macedonia, are left with a distorted understanding of the situation in Ukraine. By repeatedly foregrounding claims of church closures, assaults on clergy, and persecution, the website leans heavily on emotional amplification.
In April 2024, MOC-OA distanced itself from various church news portals, including Liturgija MK, stating that official reactions and statements concerning the MOC-OA are disseminated only through the Synod and the designated public relations person.
However, upon a closer examination, many of the MOC-OA official channels (eparchy websites) have formally backed its launch in 2024, as shown in the screenshots, suggesting a high degree of MOC-OA institutional support.
According to Marjan Nikolovski, Ukrainian disinformation narratives in the Macedonian context aim to foster “an anti-European climate marked by strong Euroscepticism and increased anti-NATO sentiment”.
Liturgija.mk can have a significant influence on how public opinion is shaped among believers as they are not always fully aware of the complexities surrounding geopolitical church issues, he said.
Turning a court hearing into a ban on Orthodoxy
A Liturgija.mk article from October, which discusses calls by UOC followers for a three-day fast on the night before the court in Ukraine was supposed to decide whether to stop the activity of the Kyiv Metropolis, the administrative centre of the UOC, is an example of framing distortion.
This article, like many others on the websites, is taken and translated from sources known to be close to the Russian Orthodox Church – OrthoChristian.com. However, this translation is clearly problematic as it is filled with layered distortions, a vector for importing FIMI narratives.
There are three identified instances of disinformation in this 224-word text alone. In the introduction of the text, it is said that UOC calls Orthodox Christians to fast and pray in anticipation of the court hearing with which the state wants to “shut down/ban the Church”.
In this specific case, the use of the word “ban the Church [Macedonian translation]” implies two things – banning the entire UOC and all of its 9000-1000 parishes through one court hearing, as well as indirectly banning the whole of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. The court case in question dealt primarily with the ban of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC.
This leads to another inaccuracy that any such ban would affect the “entire church from its main administrative centre and all the institutions linked to it.” This is also not true, as there are many of the big UOC monasteries that have their own separate structures in place.
Cyryl Hovorun, a leading Ukrainian theologian, commenting on the possibility of banning the UOC, stated that it would be really difficult to ban the church on the parish level. According to him, courts can remove parishes from their official registration, but they can continue to exist without any formal legislation.
UOC’s own spokesperson, Metropolitan Klyment, confirmed this:
“We now already have many parishes without any registration, nor connection with the state,” he said. “De jure, they have been closed down; but de facto, the law cannot ‘close down’ places of worship.”
When giving background information, the article states that “the state campaign against Orthodoxy began seriously in August last year.” This is a strong message, directly attacking Ukrainian President Zelensky for organizing and implementing a campaign against the Orthodox faith.
The functioning of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which, according to surveys, has the biggest support among Ukraine’s Orthodox population, shows this is not the case.
Ukrainian authorities passed legislation that bans the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and religious organisations with links to the ROC, as it is considered an extension of Putin’s war machinery. They did not ban the UOC outright.
After the law was adopted in August 2025, it was given almost a year to streamline its canonical connections and not be subjugated under Moscow. If the UOC decided to join the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, for example, none of these provisions would apply and would continue to function with no restrictions.
Territorial and war “normalization”
The coverage by Liturgija.mk is disproportionate with news and reporting affecting the religious developments in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories by Russia.
Some of its reporting, like the example in the story below about Donetsk, effectively claims that Donetsk is part of Russia and can be seen as a direct effort to align public perception in North Macedonia with Russia’s territorial claims.
The article in question deals with the dissemination of “significant amounts” of religious literature in the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, which is the name of the separatist entity that Russia recognised days before the invasion started as “independent” and afterwards formally annexed it.
The uncritical reporting of Donetsk as part of the Russian Federation is a claim that is deeply problematic concerning North Macedonia’s official government position, which supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Imbalanced approach
Russia and the occupying authorities have been implementing a ban on the number of Christian churches in the occupied territories since the war started. Liturgija mk’s largely one-sided views, which protect Russia from any wrongdoing, can be characterized as selective omission.
An investigation by Novaya Gazeta, published in April, into religious trends in the four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine found that religious and congregational pluralism is now largely absent. It stated that Protestant communities have decreased by 360% while communities affiliated with the UOC decreased by 140%. The situation is even more dire when it comes to the Ukrainian Catholic communities:
The Catholic Church has been almost completely wiped out in the occupied territories: just one of 15 Catholic parishes remains, while not a single one of the 49 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church parishes that existed prior to the occupation still does, says the Novaya Gazeta investigation.
Liturgija.mk doesn’t mention the reports of priests being killed or abducted by Russian forces, such as the case of Fr Stepan Podolchak of the UOC, who was reported to have been killed and tortured by Russian occupiers in the Kherson Oblast last year. According to local reports, he continued to hold services in Ukrainian and refused to switch to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The examples above show how the pro-Russian stance of the Macedonian Orthodox Church has opened a channel for Russian disinformation operations in this region of the Balkans.
Liturgija.mk’s strong reliance on Moscow-friendly sources such as OrthoChristian, often through direct, unchecked translation into Macedonian, accelerates the development of public opinion sympathetic to Russia’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine.
