Spy from God. Service of Patriarch Kirill in the KGB

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church worked under the pseudonym Mikhailov in Geneva for the Soviet secret service in the 1970s. The media declared the archive of the Swiss police.

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, whose real name is Vladimir Gundyaev, was a Soviet intelligence agent in Switzerland in the 1970s. This was found out from declassified police archives for the period from 1969 to 1989, according to the SonntagsZeitung publication.

Journalists who have read the documents claim that Gundyaev’s connection with the KGB of the USSR is documented. In particular, one of its tasks was to collect information about the members of the World Council of Churches and to influence their attitude towards the Soviet Union.

It should be noted that Kirill was a tutor in a church in the suburb of Geneva Chen-Bougerie, now it is managed by Gundyaev’s nephew.

The spy that girls love

The Soviet Union was an atheist state, but in 1971 the Soviet authorities allowed the 24-year-old priest Kirill to move to Geneva to represent the “Russian Orthodox” at the World Council of Churches.

According to media reports, despite the fact that he came from Moscow as an official representative, Kirill quickly gained the trust of the emigrants.

“He was very self-confident, ambitious and had a strong voice,” recalled a Genevan who knew him at the time.

“He had a brilliant intellectual education. He was good at expressing himself and improvising,” said Antoine Nivier, professor of Russian culture at the University of Lorraine.

Sonntags Zeitung

“How handsome he was in his youth! Unfortunately, he was not married. But the girls loved him. He was tall, young and always in a good mood. People were attracted to him,” Kirill described in his autobiography, a former consul at the Soviet embassy in Geneva and a KGB officer Vadim Melnikov.

“Man of God” in BMW

In the archival card index of the Swiss Federal Police, Gundyaev is listed as “Monsignor Kirill” and is said to have belonged to the KGB. From July 1969 to February 1989, there are a total of 37 entries in Kirill’s filing cabinet, most of which only concern his visa applications and entry to Switzerland.

“However, it was mentioned twice that the priest was on a list of Soviet officials ‘against whom measures were taken.’ It was not explained what steps were taken,” said journalists who reviewed the archive.

“We were told: beware of these priests, because they are KGB agents. Talking to Kirill, I always felt that he was looking for information. He was very friendly, but asked a lot of questions about the exile and the clergy, ” a man from Geneva told the publication who wanted to remain anonymous

KGB officer Melnikov described his then-friend Kirill as a jovial man who loved cognac and champagne parties until dawn, and also liked to wander the Swiss mountains. According to Melnikov, the “man of God” drove a white BMW sedan. In 1974, Kirill and Melnikov had an accident in this car. According to the KGB official, the BMW with Kirill at the wheel skidded off the road and crashed into a lamp post. The accident attracted too much public attention, Melnikov said. Soon, he and Kirill left for Switzerland.

Winter sports and real estate

Returning to the USSR, Gundyaev quickly “rose” in the Orthodox hierarchy. But as a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, he continued to travel to Switzerland since 1975, not only for skiing, but for “work.”

Some of Kirill’s Swiss friends are members of the Savoretti family. In the 1960s, Italian-born Piero Savoretti opened up the Soviet market with the Fiat automobile company.
Now his widow Nina told Tages-Anzeiger that she met Kirill in Geneva in the early 1980s. Savoretti also has an apartment in Courmayeur, in Italy’s Aosta Valley. The priest lived there when he visited for winter sports.

Sonntags Zeitung

In recent years, Russian media have repeatedly written about the Swiss real estate owned by Kirill. But there is no evidence for this.

Nina Savoretti assured the journalists that these were just rumors: “Kirill is a very cultured person, appreciates the Italian Renaissance, reads a lot. But he has nothing here! He has no hidden money. Every time we go to a restaurant, he watches carefully how much he spends. We invited him before because he had no money.”

Kirill’s nephew also assured Geneva “that Patriarch Kirill has no real estate or bank account in Switzerland.”

However, Swiss real estate is somehow connected to Cyril, reporters report. Near a church in the Geneva suburb of Chen-Bougerie stands a villa bought by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1987 with the blessing and help of the Soviet regime. Now Kirill’s nephew lives here.

Treatment in Switzerland

Until a few years ago, the patriarch maintained close relations with Switzerland, the media reported. In December 2016, he went to Zurich to preach at the Russian Orthodox Church of the Resurrection of Christ. At that time, eastern Ukraine was already occupied by Russia, and the Crimean peninsula was annexed. However, in Zurich, the patriarch said only that he was praying “for peace in Ukraine.”

In 2018, Kirill spoke to the Federation Council of the Russian Federation and said he had just arrived from Switzerland. People there are very rich, but no one shows this wealth, and in Russia every person puts his new Maybach or Rolls-Royce in front of his house “and thus causes a feeling of envy in the neighbors ,” Kirill said then. Rich Russians should better hide their wealth the Swiss way, he preached to the deputies: this would greatly improve the “psychological environment” in Russia.

It is not officially known whether Kirill visited his beloved country again after that, but according to media reports, the patriarch is in poor health, so he often travels to Switzerland for treatment. There he spends “astronomical sums” on his recovery. However, there is no evidence for this assertion.

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