In April, a special three-hour session was held in the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, exposing Satanism as a form of Western-backed “hybrid warfare” against the Russian State. MP Andrei Kartapolov, who heads the Duma’s Defense Committee, called Satanism “a direct threat to Russian statehood,” arguing that devil-worshippers in his otherwise saintly Orthodox Christian country were directly funded by the Western taxpayer.

“Where are their books and posters printed, who pays for their concerts, shows, performances, the renting of halls, bars, clubs?” he asked. Uncle Sam does, apparently. Supposedly, there were 800,000 Satanist secret agents now active across Russia, compared to a mere 40,000 Orthodox priests – but only if you classed magicians, fortune-tellers, psychics and tarot-card readers as being ‘Satanists’, as opposed to simple stage-entertainers and businesspeople.

Talk of the Devil

Fewer MPs joined the meeting than expected, but Kartapolov explained this was only because politicians were “wary of signing up as open enemies of Lucifer” lest they end up being attacked by demons.

To guard against this possibility, several Orthodox bishops attended too, alongside top military men, brandishing weapons both spiritual and temporal. Proceedings began with prayers to the Holy Spirit to “cleanse [attendees] from filth.” Bishop Pitirim of Skopin and Shatsk then opined that, as the West, from Napoleon to Hitler, had never managed to conquer Russia from the outside with tanks and troops, America and Europe had decided to destroy her from within instead by converting previously innocent citizens into occultists.

Speakers were careful to link Satanism to two other key evils of modern Russia allegedly funded by the West, as well – Ukrainian Nazism and homosexuality. Orthodox priest Fyodor Lukyanov gave a presentation titled ‘Common Features of the LGBT Movement and the Satanic Movement,’ whilst another lecturer warned skeptics they had better remember how “German Nazism was also laughed at in the beginning” – the Nazis also often being popularly alleged to have enjoyed occultist sympathies.

Significantly, the assembly began with a video showing activities of Ukraine’s famous Azov Battalion, which is often said to enjoy far-right sympathies, with a voiceover ranting about “Satanic ritual orgies” supposedly going on amongst Azov troops.

Cult Fiction

Last July, a similar meeting had been chaired by General Vladimir Shamanov, formerly a Chechen war commander, now an MP, at which his fellow MP Olga Timofeeva claimed that “occult forces have prevented the Duma from passing a law against this evil eight times already.” Timofeeva was incorrect: Satanist practices are already de facto illegal in Russia anyway, which initially seemed to render the Duma sessions pointless.

One of Russia’s leading experts in religious cults, Alexander Dvorkin, criticized the meetings, saying that “As far as I know, Satanic organizations have already been recognized as extremist and banned” – as with the U.S. ‘Satanic Temple’ group in 2024, when the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office officially registered them as “undesirable” for posting info about how to donate to the Ukrainian war effort on their website.

Dvorkin alleges the dummies in the Duma had no idea what Satanism actually was, saying the relevant Azov battalion troops were actually more likely to be neo-pagans and scoffing that crystal-ball-gazers and tarot-readers were not devil-worshippers at all. “If everything is called Satanism, then it turns into a [all-purpose] curse-word, which we use to call everything that we do not like,” Dvorkin said. Indeed so: but that is the whole point, as this makes accusations of ‘Satanism’ an excellent means of crushing dissent.

Under Russian law, “displaying the symbols of extremism” is punishable by up to four years in prison. When such “symbols” are so loosely defined that they could potentially include wholly innocent things like a Halloween outfit, a book of Decadent-era poems employing Satan as a literary metaphor, or a horror movie DVD, then this is a great new way for the security services to ensure an easy prosecution.

Demonizing Your Opponents

Queer, pedo, Nazi, Satanist – all are just convenient smear-synonyms for ‘anti-Putin’ now, used to tar political opponents as the most morally repugnant offenders imaginable against whom any actions are justifiable. Worse, when aimed specifically against Ukrainians, such labels become an automatic validation for war and murder.

In 2022, Andrei Kartapolov, the chief mover in April’s Duma session, had already published an article calling Ukraine a “witch’s cauldron” within which “neo-pagan cults” and Satanist covens with sinister names like “White Hammer,” “Great Fire,” and “The Grandchildren of Veles,” had been “openly using the runic trident and the Black Sun – symbols of the occult practices of the SS,” as well as their members having Hitler’s face and the Goat of Baphomet tattooed on their bodies.

Kartapolov alleged there were now witchcraft shops operating brazenly in Kyiv, where sorceresses sold customers curses to place upon invading Russian troops, whilst “the oldest primordial Ukrainian god, who has been sleeping for centuries in the Dnieper hills,” had been awoken from his slumber to fight on the Azov Battalion’s side.

Hearing this, Putin’s chief war-ally, de facto dictator of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, called for the immediate “complete de-satanization” of Ukraine in the name of Islam as well as Orthodoxy. Former Russian PM Dmitrii Medvedev agreed, saying the ultimate goal of the Ukraine war was clear: not just to counter NATO, but “stop the Supreme Ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses – Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis.”

How can you compromise when fighting Satan? You can’t: like his alleged ally Hitler, you just have to defeat him. So, the war must continue until Kyiv/Hell has fallen, no matter what the cost in blood or treasure. But how sincere is the Kremlin in such rhetoric, really? Not very.

As part of Putin’s needs-must policy of setting convicts free if they agree to serve a term in the Russian military, several actual genuine Russian Satanists have been conscripted to fight on the side of God. This would include a cannibal murderer named Nikolai Ogolobyak, who in 2008 helped murder four innocent teenagers in a Satanic ritual before reportedly cutting off their heads and ripping out their hearts and tongues before eating them. Following six months fighting in Ukraine, Ogolobyak was pardoned, a free man.

Given this fact, if the Putinistas really want to outlaw the state-backed enablers of devil-worshipping, maybe they should begin by arresting themselves?