This platform is run by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) of the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).Pavlo Smytsynuk has been the Mary Seeger O’Boyle Associate Research Scholar at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of Religion at Princeton University since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He specializes in political theology and religious nationalism in Orthodox Christianity and has written extensively on the politicization of religion in the current Russo-Ukrainian war.CIUS: Long before the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Vatican’s so-called Ostpolitik was controversial in Ukraine. Can you tell our readers what that policy entailed and what its legacies are today?Smytsnyuk: Ostpolitik is a term used by scholars to refer to the Vatican’s or other Western churches’ approach to the USSR, other East European socialist governments, and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).