Russian publicist Alexander Soldatov, who is in Ukraine now, spoke in an interview with Religious Pravda about the “charisma, strength and vitality” of the Putin regime and said that “the ROC will inevitably disintegrate.”

“If the transit of power begins, then these transformation processes will also affect the ROC… the process of the jurisdictional institutional fragmentation of the ROC-MP into rather different-sized groups, significant in terms of group size, will begin,” Soldatov said.

“One group, I think, will instantly restore these relations, recognize the position of Constantinople. The other, on the contrary, will fall into a more radical non-recognition and will move closer to something like the Old Believers, or perhaps the Old Believers as well… Therefore, as long as the Putin regime exists, it cements, freezes, paralyzes the institutional development of the church. When it`s gone, all the bonds will break and the internal division, which is already there, will spill out,” Soldatov said.