Window on Eurasia: ‘Russia Has Only 50 Years Left,’ Kurayev Tells Ukrainians

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 24 – “Russia has only 50 years left of its historical existence,” Orthodox Deacon Andrei Kurayev told a group of Ukrainian academic and religious figures in Lviv last week, noting that “a country in which young men do not want to go in the army and young women to give birth is doomed.”
Kurayev, a controversial Russian Orthodox publicist who teaches at the Moscow Theological Academy, made these at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Western Ukraine last Wednesday (http://www.risu.org.ua/rus/news/article;17905/8). And because this danger is so great, he continued, Russia’s only choice now is “Orthodoxy or death.”
In other comments, he said that Ukraine could only have a future if it does not join the European Union. Were Kyiv to do so, Kurayev continued, this would be “death for Ukraine.” And he stressed that the Moscow Patriarchate always has “softer” relations with the Roman Catholic Church than it does with the Uniates.
The Ukrainian news service did not give any details on the reaction of his listeners, but now that Moscow’s Portal-Credo.ru site has picked up the RISU report (see http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=news&id=56980), it is likely that both Ukrainian and Russian writers will criticize what Kurayev has said on this occasion.