This book highlights a purely geopolitical issue, despite its seemingly religious dimension: the war that Moscow has declared on the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The phrase "Moscow, the Third Rome" is part of our school sounds. Few, however, know that Moscow's self-designation as the "Third Rome" is systematically fueled by a national line of creating religious "colonies," with obvious political benefits.

The centuries-old Russian strategy of penetration and dominance in the Orthodox world has seen a new surge in the post-Soviet era. In Greece, since the early 2000s, a well-orchestrated campaign of "hybrid warfare" has been raging, aimed at turning Greek society against the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

At the same time, Moscow has tried, with threats and acts of sabotage against Patriarch Bartholomew, to hinder the creation of an autocephalous Church in Ukraine, which it considers its spiritual "colony." Having failed to blackmail the developments, it severed ties with Istanbul, Athens, and with any other Church that recognized Ukraine's religious emancipation.

I have tried, by studying the formation of Russian Orthodoxy and the worldview of state and Church in Russia, to understand how the arrogant "geopolitics of Orthodoxy" was born. Only today, with the Orthodox "oikoumene" facing the risk of division, does the broader society show interest in all of this, beyond the narrow circle of clergy, ecclesiastical historians, and diplomats.

The Russians remain prisoners of their seduction for a glorious past. But does their obsession with the imperial idea and power ultimately undermine their influence in the entire Orthodox world?