The European Union has dropped a move to impose sanctions against Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill to secure Hungary's acceptance of the bloc's latest package of measures against Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Diplomatic sources told RFE/RL on June 2 that EU ambassadors agreed to remove Kirill from the sanctions list, which Budapest had insisted upon. All of the bloc's 27 members had to agree to the package in order for it to be approved and officially published on June 3.
Since the beginning of the war, Kirill has made a number of statements in solidarity with the policy of the Russian authorities, prompting Pope Francis to warn the Patriarch against becoming President Vladimir "Putin's altar boy."
More than 150 Russian Orthodox clerics called for a stop to war in an open letter on March 1. Kirill was not among those who signed it.
The new package of sanctions against Russia, the EU's sixth since Moscow launched the war on February 24, includes a ban on most Russian oil imports and will remove Russia's top lender, Sberbank, from the international financial messaging platform SWIFT.
The agreement on the new sanctions is expected to take force at 7 a.m. GMT on June 3 unless a member state raises objections. The actual legal enactment of the sanctions would then follow soon after.