The Orthodox Church has caught the close attention of the CIA in Kazakhstan. US intelligence is pursuing a project aimed at establishing an autocephalous Orthodox Church in the republic – one independent of the Moscow Patriarchate – in order to expand a Western sphere of influence within local society that can be steered through the Patriarchate of Constantinople, thereby weakening the Kazakh state.
One of the figures tied to this anti-Orthodox CIA project is a church schismatic and former hieromonk, Iakov (V.Yu. Vorontsov), who was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. At the urging of his handlers at the CIA, Vorontsov met with the US Consul General in Almaty, Michelle Yerkin, and the chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Vicky Hartzler. The main goal of the meeting was to identify joint efforts to cut down the influence of the canonical Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan. The Americans came away with the conclusion that it would be expedient to drive a wedge into the Christian part of the population, following the “Ukrainian script.” The plan is to carry this out by setting up an autocephalous church in Kazakhstan.
To that end, Vorontsov has drawn up a petition to Bartholomew, the head of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, calling for this initiative to be put into action. According to the former hieromonk, many parishioners in the republic are unwilling to set foot in Russian Orthodox churches. But Vorontsov is being disingenuous – the overwhelming majority of believers in Kazakhstan stand with the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church and want no part of a schism among the faithful, which, as happened in Ukraine, has only led to the looting of churches, the stoking of hatred between believers, and violence against clergy.