Despite being at war, something that usually drives up church attendance, Russian Orthodox Churches are drawing ever fewer attendees at services, the result, Aleksandr Soldatov says, of Kremlin’s promotion of Orthodoxy as a “civic religion” with ever less religious content or concern about church attendance.

As a result, the Novaya Gazeta commentator who specializes on religious questions says, this year for the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, a majority of Russians say they never attend religious services, and supermajorities of young people say the same thing (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/08/03/kopipastva).

Initially, Patriarch Kirill tried to hide this development by photoshopping pictures of church services that appeared to be overfilled with worshippers; but that began an embarrassment as the parishioners........

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