Russian Patriarch Kirill’s full-throated blessing for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church and unleashed an internal rebellion that experts say is unprecedented.

Kirill, 75, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, sees the war as a bulwark against a West he considers decadent, particularly over the acceptance of homosexuality.

He and Putin share a vision of the “Russkiy Mir”, or “Russian World”, linking spiritual unity and territorial expansion aimed at parts of the ex-Soviet Union, experts told Reuters.

But the patriarch has sparked a backlash at home as well as among churches abroad linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. In Russia, nearly 300 Orthodox members of a group called Russian Priests for Peace signed a letter condemning the “murderous orders” carried out in Ukraine.