Russian Patriarch Kirill Spied In Switzerland For KGB In 70s

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a strong supporter of President Vladimir Putin, worked for Soviet intelligence while living in Switzerland in the 1970s, Swiss newspapers reported, citing declassified archives, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Photo Insert: Patriarch Kirill is known as a staunch ally of Putin.

According to the Sonntagszeitung and Le Matin Dimanche weeklies, the Swiss police file on the man who today serves as the spiritual head of the Russian Orthodox Church "confirms that 'Monsignor Kirill,' as he is referred to in this document, worked for the KGB."

The two papers said they had gained access to the file in the Swiss national archives. Kirill, who today is a fervent supporter of Putin's war in Ukraine, lived in Geneva in the early 1970s, officially as a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church at the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Under the code name "Mikhailov," Kirill's mission was to influence the council, already infiltrated by the KGB, the papers said. The Russian Orthodox Church has refused to comment on Kirill's spying activity in Geneva, while the WCC had maintained it had no information about the case, they said.

The Swiss weeklies stressed the archives showed the Soviet objective was to push the institution to denounce the United States and its allies and to tone down its criticism of the lack of religious freedoms in the Soviet Union.

The patriarch's nephew Mikhail Gundyaev, who currently represents the Russian church at the WCC in Geneva, however, insisted to Le Matin Dimanche that his uncle "was not an agent, although he was subjected to 'strict controls' by the KGB."

And this, he insisted, "did not affect the sincerity of his engagement in ecumenical work with other churches."

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