And some American Evangelicals consider the Orthodox Church to be a front for the KGB...
Which is accurate. Archbishop Kirill has a KGB codename and worked under orders at the World Council of Churches to spread Liberation Theology to Latin America.
Oh, you said “Orthodox,” not “Russian Orthodox.” The latter definitely is under the control of Russia’s FSB. And only 7% of Russians even bother attending church once a month.
WOW! Maybe you are correct!
1. Putin Runs The Russian State—And The Russian Church Too
Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/putin-solzhenitsyn-kirill-russia-opinions-contributors_orthodox_church.html?sh=3781a8cd3bf9
2. I found this at Wiki:
Patriarch Kirill introduced significant changes in the administrative structure of the Church. On 31 March 2009, the Holy Synod, at its first meeting under the chairmanship of the newly elected Patriarch Kirill, reformed the DECR, forming new synodal institutions, which were entrusted with certain areas of activity previously dealt with by the DECR.
The Department for Church-Society Relations [ru], independent from the DECR, was created; this department was responsible for “the implementation of relations with legislative bodies, political parties, professional and creative unions, and other civil society institutions in the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Dioceses, representative offices [ru], metochions, monasteries and stavropegic parishes far abroad, which were previously under the authority of the DECR, were directly subordinated to the Patriarch of Moscow of All Russia; to manage them, the Moscow Patriarchate’s Secretariat for Institutions Abroad was created. The Synodal Information Department [ru] was created.
IMPORTATION OF CIGARETTES
Journalists of the newspapers Kommersant and Moskovskij Komsomolets accused Kirill of profiteering and abuse of the privilege of duty-free importation of cigarettes granted to the church in the mid-1990s and dubbed him “Tobacco Metropolitan”.
The Department for External Church Relations was alleged to have acted as the largest supplier of foreign cigarettes in Russia. The profits of this operation allegedly under Kirill’s direction were estimated to have totaled $1.5 billion by sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin in 2004, and at $4 billion by The Moscow News in 2006.
However, Nathaniel Davis said that “There is no evidence that Metropolitan Kirill has actually EMBEZZLED funds. What is more likely is that profits from the importation of tobacco and cigarettes have been used for urgent, pressing Church expenses.”
The duty-free importation of cigarettes ended in 1997.