{"id":192593,"date":"2024-04-10T20:07:14","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T17:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/df.news\/?p=192593"},"modified":"2024-04-13T09:09:59","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T06:09:59","slug":"russian-orthodox-church-declares-holy-war-against-ukraine-and-west-atlantic-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/2024\/04\/10\/russian-orthodox-church-declares-holy-war-against-ukraine-and-west-atlantic-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Orthodox Church declares \u201cHoly War\u201d against Ukraine and West – Atlantic Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Russian Orthodox Church has approved a remarkable new\u00a0document<\/a> that spells out the Kremlin\u2019s intention to destroy Ukraine while also making the ideological argument for a broader confrontation with the Western world. The decree was issued during a March 27-28 congress of the World Russian People\u2019s Council, which is headed by Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill. It calls the invasion of Ukraine a \u201cHoly War\u201d with the explicit aim of extinguishing Ukrainian independence and imposing direct Russian rule, reads an article by Brian Mefford, the Director of Wooden Horse Strategies, LLC, a governmental-relations and strategic communications firm based in Kyiv. The piece was posted by the Atlantic Council.<\/a><\/p>\n

Churches often issue decrees stating official positions on key issues, but rarely do these proclamations involve calls to violence or territorial ambitions. Russia is mentioned 53 times in the 3000-word document, underlining the very clear focus on the Russian state\u2019s earthly interests. \u201cFrom the spiritual and moral point of view, the Special Military Operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people are defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia,\u201d the document states, using the Kremlin\u2019s preferred euphemism for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The decree goes on to stress Ukraine\u2019s status as part of the wider \u201cRussian World,\u201d while underlining the need to extinguish Ukrainian statehood once and for all. Following the conclusion of the current war, it\u00a0states<\/a>, \u201cthe entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter Russia\u2019s exclusive zone of influence. The possibility of a political regime hostile to Russia and its people existing on this territory must be completely excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sentiments expressed in this recently approved document expand on previous statements made by Patriarch Kirill since the onset of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion more than two years ago. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has frequently asserted that Ukrainians and Russians are \u201cone nation<\/a>,\u201d and is widely viewed as a key ideological supporter of the war. Kirill\u2019s comments have led to widespread criticism, including a warning from Pope Francis to avoid becoming \u201cPutin\u2019s altar boy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new decree positions Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as part of a larger spiritual struggle against the West, which it accuses of having \u201cfallen into Satanism.\u201d This is strikingly similar to the ideological arguments favored by Islamist radicals, who have long sought to portray the United States and other Western nations as \u201cSatanic\u201d as part of efforts to justify their extremist agenda. In addition to the Russian Orthodox Church, numerous senior Kremlin officials have sought to frame the war in Ukraine as an existential fight with Western \u201cSatanism<\/a>.\u201d In a further chilling echo of the Islamist doctrine, Patriarch Kirill has also claimed Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine would have their sins \u201cwashed away<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s endorsement of language more typically associated with religious extremism should come as no surprise. After all, the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine has been framed as a crusade from the very beginning. Following the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin compared the occupied Ukrainian peninsula to\u00a0Temple Mount<\/a>\u00a0and spoke of its spiritual importance to the Russian nation. He routinely insists Ukrainians are actually Russians (\u201cone people\u201d), and has\u00a0labeled<\/a>\u00a0Ukraine \u201can inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recent confirmation of a holy war against Ukraine and the West comes at a pivotal point in Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion. Since February 2022, Putin\u2019s invading army has been unable to overcome Ukrainian resistance or break the country\u2019s will to defend itself. With little current prospect of a decisive military breakthrough, the Kremlin is now turning increasingly to terror tactics, including a sharp escalation in the bombing of Ukrainian cities and the methodical destruction of Ukraine\u2019s civilian power grid.<\/p>\n

By defining the invasion in explicitly spiritual terms, the Russian Orthodox Church hopes to whitewash the war crimes being committed in Ukraine and encourage more ordinary Russians to volunteer. Moscow\u2019s recent declaration of a holy war also sends an unmistakable message to anyone in the West who still believes in the possibility of striking some kind of compromise with the Kremlin. While Putin initially sought to justify the invasion as a pragmatic response to the growth of NATO, it is now apparent that he views the war as a sacred mission and will not stop until Ukraine has been wiped off the map of Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russian Orthodox Church has approved a remarkable new\u00a0document that spells out the Kremlin\u2019s intention to destroy Ukraine while also making the ideological argument for a broader confrontation with the Western world. The decree was issued during a March 27-28 congress of the World Russian People\u2019s Council, which is headed by Russian Orthodox Church leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":101517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"telegram_tosend":false,"telegram_tosend_message":"","telegram_tosend_target":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5142,5147],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-192593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world-en"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/F8777B84-629D-452F-889C-F0FCC6DB4B15.jpeg?fit=1126%2C621&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192594,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192593\/revisions\/192594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}