A protest by residents of Krasnodar’s Yubileyny district against the construction of a church complex on Rozhdestvenskaya Embankment on November 30 triggered a sharp political reaction. Local media said about 200 people took part, and the authorities did not obstruct the gathering. Participants recorded an appeal to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev, stressing that they were not opposed to a church as such but wanted to preserve the embankment, the park, and access to the river.
A source who spoke to Novaya Gazeta Europe said most local residents identify as Orthodox Christians and are not against new churches, but object to this specific project. A large Nativity church already stands at the start of the embankment, two smaller churches are located at the entrances to the district, and, according to the Yekaterinodar diocese, regular services are held in 86 churches and chapels across the city of roughly one million people.
In 2021 and 2024, Krasnodar’s urban planning commission held public hearings on the cathedral project. After both rounds, the project was sent back for “revision.” Diocese representatives described the planned site as a family space for walking and socializing, but some residents saw the plan as a threat to a public recreational area.
Politicians then entered the dispute. City council deputy Alexander Safronov of the Communist Party took part in the rally, although the protest itself featured no party symbols. Boris Korchevnikov, chief executive and general producer of the Orthodox TV channel Spas, accused the Communist Party of organizing the protest and linked opposition to the church project to a wider ideological struggle. In his public remarks, he continued the anti-communist line he has advanced in recent months.
The day after those statements, on December 5, Governor Kondratyev said on the Kuban 24 channel that the decision to build had already been made. He said the authorities could not ignore an appeal from participants in the war, who, in his words, should have “their own church.” He referred to an approved “SVO church” project whose lower floor is intended to house a patriotic education hall with 500 seats.
The Communist Party largely avoided responding publicly to Korchevnikov’s latest attacks, though it had previously criticized Spas for its portrayal of the Soviet period. A documentary film titled Mummy, which premiered in June, became a symbol of this confrontation in the second half of the year. Its author, Spas commentator Andrei Afanasyev, portrayed communism as an ideology close to occult and satanic ideas, prompting criticism from left-wing commentators and from part of the church community.
The official Russian Orthodox Church, however, has not pursued such a harsh public polemic against the Soviet past and continues working relations with the Communist Party. Against that backdrop, the dispute over construction on Rozhdestvenskaya Embankment has become more than a local conflict over urban development, turning into part of a broader ideological confrontation in which religious, political, and wartime rhetoric are tightly intertwined.