Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

Perhaps Medvedev's letter was the start of Russian intervention in the next election, but a recent religious visit by the Russian Patriarch demonstrated another aspect of this intervention: cultural and spiritual.  The recent visit by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill  was an implicit political maneuver dressed up as a religious visit. A  Eurasia Daily Monitor (V.6, Issue 155) article on the visit noted the emphasis on spiritual closeness and common history between Ukrainians and Russians by the patriarch. An old move by Russia to de-emphasize an independent and separate Ukrainian identity. 

.... In line with Moscow's official rhetoric, Kirill spoke a lot
about the common roots of Russia and Ukraine dating back to the
medieval Kyiv Rus. One of his chief ideologists, Andrey Kuraev, was
more outspoken, threatening Ukraine with a civil war should a
single church fully independent from Moscow ever be established
(Ekho Moskvy, July 27).

Demonstrating that he views Ukraine as part of
the Russian space, Kirill ostentatiously refused to discuss local
Ukrainian issues at the first ever sitting of the Russian synod in
Kyiv. At the same time, he reported on a recent meeting of Russian
religious leaders with President Dmitry Medvedev (UNIAN, July 27).
Immediately on returning from Kyiv, Kirill met Medvedev to tell him
that the "spiritual unity" existing between Russia and Ukraine "for
millennia" "became a basic value that is not affected by political
considerations" (Interfax-Ukraine, August 6).

Unfortunately, as this slide-show from RFE shows, some Ukrainian nationalists showed up looking and acting like neo-fascists. While in another RFE article, the fuzzy line between politics and religion that Patriarch Kirill holds is noted. 

"This Church already exists, Mr. President. It is the local Church of Ukraine, and if it did not exist, Ukraine would not exist today," Kirill hit back. "There is no imperialism here, no domination over others. There is only a clear Orthodox doctrine: the patriarch is everyone's father, regardless of the color of passports in people's pockets or the state in which they live."

The patriarch went on to describe Kyiv as the "southern capital of Russian Orthodoxy," and dismissed Ukraine's breakaway churches as "wounds" on the body of the Russian Orthodox Church