“So it will be,” Mr. Putin said. “There is no doubt at all.”

The request was one that plunged deep into geopolitics, since Christian minorities are aligned with several of the governments that have faced popular uprisings. The statements on “Christianophobia” amount to a denunciation of Western intervention, especially in Egypt and Iraq, which lost two-thirds of its 1.5 million Christians after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Western analysts acknowledge the dangers faced by Christians in Syria, but say the church would be wise to distance itself from the Assad government and prepare for a political transition.

“What we see now in Syria is systemic failure — it’s brutal, it’s now an insurgency — but in the end it’s just systemic failure,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Syria. “If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they’re going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn’t have a long-term future.”

The Russian Orthodox Church regularly meets with the Russian Foreign Ministry to discuss its agenda outside Russia’s borders, and is seen by most experts as eager to render support to the Kremlin.

Still, there have been moments when the church’s foreign policy aims appeared distinct. In 2009, just as President Dmitri A. Medvedev publicly blasted his counterpart in Ukraine, Viktor A. Yushchenko, Patriarch Kirill published a note thanking Mr. Yushchenko for his hospitality on a visit, Mr. Zolotov said.

Tension was also apparent surrounding Patriarch Kirill’s visit to Damascus late last year, which was delayed repeatedly and planned under conditions of high secrecy, Mr. Zolotov said. By that point, the United Nations estimated that 3,500 people had been killed as government forces tried to put down the uprising, and the Arab League had suspended Syria’s membership in an attempt to increase diplomatic pressure.