Ukraine''s Far-Right Movements and Their Connections to the Religious World

The issue of the relationship between right-wing movements and religious communities is extremely interesting and important today, particularly in the Ukrainian context. In Ukraine, the fight for national liberation against Russia has been escalated by the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, which has led to the active transformation of the religious field, together with the strengthening of patriotic and sometimes nationalistic discourses. Instrumental pious nationalism as a theoretical framework, deserves special attention because it is exactly this type of connection between religion and nationalism that is most often employed in the situation of the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine (Rieffer herself regards this type as inherent in the religious situation of post-Soviet Russia). The peculiarity of instrumental pious nationalism is that religion is not a major category but rather an additional element for community unification; thus, it becomes a useful resource for national leaders to influence society and gain the trust of their electorates. Moreover, within this type, religion serves as a legitimization resource for new state institutions and for maintaining the authority of the state and leaders in times of crisis.