The day before Russians marched on Ukraine, he congratulated Russian soldiers as defenders of the fatherland and said they “cannot have any doubt that they have chosen a very correct path in their lives.” Less than two weeks after the invasion began, he described the conflict as having “metaphysical significance” and warned his flock that the price of admission to the happy world of Western consumption and freedom was as simple as it was terrible: to agree to hold gay pride parades…

“He lives in a parallel universe,” said UC Riverside professor Georg Michels, who specializes in Russian and Ukrainian history. “He describes the current situation in Ukraine as Russians defending against a foreign invasion, not as Ukrainians fighting for democracy, and their lives, against a Russian autocracy.”

Experts say Kirill is a complex figure in Russian politics: smart, charismatic and an ambitious operator. He rose in the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet period — when the communist government viewed religion as an archaic relic of oppression — and was the first patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church to meet with a Catholic pope in nearly 1,000 years. He is also rumored to have been associated with the KGB, the former Soviet Union’s main security apparatus.