Moscow Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) worked for the KGB, being engaged in espionage operations in the 1970s for the benefit of the Soviet Union.
The Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported the news, referring to declassified police archives, Russian media report.
This is about the period when Vladimir Gundyaev, who operated under the alias “Mikhailov”, was the official representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
According to Tages-Anzeiger, the journalists saw documents from the archives of the Swiss Federal Police (1969-1989), which, according to them, confirm that Gundyaev was affiliated with the KGB. After that, he returned to the USSR and began to quickly advance up the church hierarchy. In 1971, the 24-year-old priest Kirill was allowed to move to Geneva to represent Russian Orthodox believers at the World Council of Churches. In his autobiography, the former consul of the Soviet embassy in Geneva, Vadim Melnikov, calls Kirill not just a diplomat, but an operative with the Soviet KGB secret service.
From Soviet documents released, historians and journalists concluded that Patriarch Kirill worked for the KGB in Geneva under the alias “Mikhailov”. He was tasked with gathering intelligence about the members of the World Council of Churches and influencing their attitude towards the Soviet Union. The Russian Orthodox Church has refused to comment on Kirill’s espionage endeavors in Geneva, while the WCC says for its part that they have no information on the matter.
