Current Religious and Philosophical
threads behind Putin’s Agenda?
Everyone already knows about the
philosopher Alexandr Dugin and his ideas that serves a soundboard to Putin’s
thinking. They share the same values and hopes and dreams. It includes the
current “Agenda” of Moscow. But in the video mentioned below, the
Russian Orthodox Church is also shown to be an ingredient in the recipe of
Putin. Istanbul Russian Orthodox congregation
and Italy (Udin church) as well, separates May 2022 from the official Russian
Orthodox Church in Moscow over the war in Ukraine. There are about 100 million Russian
Orthodox believers. Arch-Patriarch Kirill in Moscow is their
top church-leader. Scholars express in this video that Kirill has grown too
close to the government. They feel personally that the church and government
needs to stay separate. Andrey Anitsyn, who's from Moscow agrees
with his parish's split. The patriarch Kiril got too close to the government.
He feels the church should be independent. "I believe that the church is
the main supplier of the ideology, Putin's ideology." he said. Father Cyrill Hovorun was ordained by
Kirill and Kirill was his theological advisor until 2012. He said that this war has a simple formula:
war = to guns plus ideas. And the guns of course were supplied by the Kremlin
and the ideas come from the church. Father Cyrill believes Putin sees this
war as a sacred operation, "a mission from God to purge the world from,
you know, impurity of the western ideas and western values. He believes that the church has created
the ideology underpinning the war. Cyrill continued "Well, actually
when I was working in the Moscow Patriarchate I was witnessing how this
ideology was emerging and I protested against that." The video narrator said that "In
soviet times priests were pushed to keep the spy service informed and it's
widely believed that Kirill was in the KGB". Cyrill is skeptical about that and said
that "Kirill was never enthusiastic about it. Which created friction with
Putin. That is why we are talking about the marriage of convenience and not the
marriage of love," Cyrill continued. Cyrill felt that they tolerated each
other [Kirill and Putin] because they use the skills, the charisma and possibly
these resources of each other. Each one for his own end. Sergei Chapnin says that the resources
are vast. He worked for Kirill. He says that there are rough estimates that he
is definitely a billionaire. Chapnin thinks that Kirill is one of
Putin's oligarchs. Chapnin sees Russia's Orthodox Church as
a state propaganda machine, spreading Putin's message as the defender of
conservative values against a morally corrupt west. Chapnin thinks that the expansionist
ambitions of Kirill even exceed those of Putin. The main motivation of
Patriarch Kirill is actually power and influence. Chapnin thinks that because of the war,
he is actually losing it. Before the war Ukraine had many Russian
Orthodox Churches loyal to Moscow. Now hundreds of Ukrainian parishes have
broken away in protest. This is not easy to do in Russia.
Source:
Youtube: “Russian Orthodox leader's
support of war divides church.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLUnf_XJt54