This is reported by the independent news medium The Moscow Times.

According to Putin, Ukraine should be "denazified", but the Patriarch gives another reason: the moral decay of the West.

The war is therefore about religion and traditional values, or as the Patriarch puts it: "which side of God is humanity on".

The Pride Parades in Ukraine are, according to the patriarch, a clear symbol of the West: "Pride Parades are meant to show that sin (read: homosexuality) is a variation of human behaviour. That's why you have to hold a Pride Parade to join the club of those countries."

“If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God's law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behaviour, then human civilization will end there,” Kirill said.

The Patriarch's speech fits the reasoning that the Russian government has used for years. Western civilization would decay because it only deals with issues like gender and homosexuality, which goes against traditional Christian values. For this reason, an anti-gay law forbidding "propaganda" was introduced in the country.

In recent years, this reasoning has also been exported to EU countries. The governments in Poland and Hungary proclaim these kinds of views and these voices are also heard in Dutch conservative-right circles.