The Russian World

The president gave a new keynote address to the plenary of the 20th Club Valdaj, one of the 'ideological' venues. To 'intellectuals' the invitation to build a 'new world'. The evocation of the axis with China, the Arab world and India against the West, whose support for Ukraine is becoming uncertain. The 'synodality' (sobornost) that sums up Putin's justifications for the conflict.

Russia's problem is the uncertainty of its position, an unresolved fluidity between East and West, North and South. It is unable to find a true unity, as evinced by its institutions, but also as seen in the diatribes among Soviet dissidents of old and today's pacifists.

Kadirov's illness and Azerbaijani Aliev's coup sweeping away the Armenian enclave dominated the week. While Baku makes Europe weigh the strength it has acquired at Moscow's expense in the gas market, the Kremlin leaves it at that, accusing the Armenians of having flirted too much with the West. Russia is trying not to lose the Caucasus, its 'Middle Eastern side' as well as Ukraine.

The leader of the Kremlin welcomed the dictator of Pyongyang to discuss low-level weapons and technology. Xi Jinping kept himself far from the two "thugs" while the Russian president used "underworld" jargon in the meeting. Patriarch Kirill renewed his "material and spiritual" support for the holy war.

The misunderstandings between Francis and Ukrainian Greek Catholics are not simply a personal issue related to today's context. The Vatican's search for harmony with the "Third Rome" of modern czars and emperors (down to party secretaries and federal presidents) has been a constant in history for more than a millennium. So have the complicated relations between the Holy See and the "Uniates" of the Kiev frontier.

The Kremlin claims to have cut ties with the West and turned east, but the facts say otherwise. Putin's Russia has renewed with its old 19th century imperial image, captured by the mid-century Crimean War when Russia was at odds with everyone in the Old World. As Moscow neglects its Eurasian expanses, Beijing is stepping in to fill the gap.

Prigozhin's ghost, dead or alive, will hover over Russia for a long time to come, as indeed happened with so many tsars and tsarevichs of the past. After the "conquest of Bakhmut" - a meaningless clash of months and months transformed into a heroic legend - the narration of the "alternative army" no longer held up the scene, and mythology showed all its inconsistency.

In Putin's mind, the flight of the Americans from the Afghan capital triggered the spring of the 'great revenge'. Russia now regularly invites Kabul's representatives to Moscow for consultations, despite the fact that the Taliban are still considered an unwelcome 'terrorist organisation'. And the other former Soviet countries are also in solidarity with the Kremlin in officially condemning the Afghan government, at the same time considering it a necessary partner.

Under the Soviet regime, education too was the subject of state attention. Now, with the new textbooks, Stalin’s glorious victory on 9 May 1945 becomes Russia’s “new baptism”, subsuming Soviet ideological rhetoric and the latest incarnation of sobornost, the universal union of peoples led by Moscow.

Putin's operation has not shifted the territorial balance but has touched the heart of the (former) empire. Radio-controlled aircraft are becoming a decisive factor in the War of the Two Worlds. In Moscow and the rest of Russia, people have lost the defensive barrier that protected their mental landscape, while, for Putin, "everything is going according to plan." The apocalypse for Christian Orthodoxy is after Russia, nothing.

The national observance of the Baptism of Kievan Rus’, on 28 July, summarises the entire post-Soviet period. Starting with the universal unity of peoples and Churches, it has come full circle over seven scores to the brink of a Third World War. We are back to square one, yearning for a time of peace and forgiveness, as described in the procedures of the Old Testament jubilees.

Tourists have been slow to arrive on the Crimean sea this year, intimidated by the trenches and bombings. The Russian government has tried hard to encourage and "precept" different categories of them, from groups of children and young people to employees of state-owned companies and oligarchies. And there is no doubt that one of the purposes of the Ukrainian attacks is directed at putting the season, the region's main economic activity, out of business.