Patriarch Kirill

The anti-Christian antics of certain pro-Ukrainian activist groups can sometimes make Putin seem a saint by comparison.

There is a growing tendency among some on the post-liberal Christian Right to offer at least soft sympathy to dictatorships deemed socially conservative, in contrast to Western wokery.

To better grasp Russian conduct, past and present, we would do well to understand its religious sources in Orthodox Christianity.

Dmitry Adamsky’s outstanding Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy explains the religious imagination that has swept not only through the Russian nuclear arsenal since 1991, but also into all levels of the country’s nuclear tirade, military forces, and even Russian foreign policy more broadly.

What on the surface seems simply an esoteric argument over ecclesiastical jurisdiction is anything but. At the heart of the schism lie the ideological underpinnings for Putin’s new nationalism, and its violent manifestations in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

The growing trend among conservatives to support Putin’s Russia is problematic because Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) engage in activities that run directly contrary to U.S. national security objectives, values of Western civilization writ large, and teaching of Christian scripture.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church clearly have a close relationship, but their foreign policy in Syria is flawed.