For years, Metropolitan Mitrofan (Badanin) of Murmansk of the Russian Orthodox Church has denied that the Varanger Peninsula belongs to Norway, calling it “our Orthodox land” that was “given away in 1826 by unscrupulous officials.” In Norway, this was called ideological subversion.
This was reported by the Telegram channel Christians Against War with reference to an article in The New Yorker dated September 9, 2024.
The church subordinate to Metropolitan is also located in the Norwegian border town of Kirkenes. In 2019, the Metropolitan himself tried to obtain information about the company that supplies drinking water to the city. In 2023, on the Russian-Norwegian border, he said: “This is where the hostile and unfriendly world begins.” On a different occasion, when speaking to a group of soldiers, he asked what would happen if Russia lost the war in Ukraine: “Is there any point in continuing history? Is it time to bring fire and brimstone upon the earth and let everything burn?”
Norwegian professor Kari Aga Myklebost called Mitrofan's activities in the Norwegian border county of Finnmark ideological subversion aimed at conveying to the local population the idea that Russia's presence there preceded Norway's.
“They are using history to legitimize the idea that this is part of the Russian cultural sphere,” Myklebost said.
This region, he said, would be most strategically useful for Russia's nuclear defense. And the renewed and consecrated Orthodox Pomeranian crosses with the Metropolitan's blessing mean that “they can be defended militarily.”
As noted by Religion in Ukraine, earlier the Telegram channel Christians Against the War reported that the ROC defrocked an anti-war priest from Norway, Fr. Dmytro Ostanin. He is a Ukrainian, originally from the Dnipropetrovs'k region, who served as rector of the Epiphany parish of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bergen, Norway.
This decision was made by the Moscow Diocesan Court on July 22, 2024: he and other clerics who took an anti-war position were accused of oathbreaking on the basis of the 25th rule of the Holy Apostles. The court's decision was approved by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.
Ostanin openly expressed his pro-Ukrainian views and opposed the war in Ukraine. For this, he was harassed by Russian Z-activists.
The priest signed an open appeal of the ROC priests against the war, his signature was under the appeal No. 187.
On March 12, 2024, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church withdrew him from the disposal of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (Journal No. 38), and on June 7, 2024, he was banned from ministry by a decree of Patriarch Kirill.