The Russian World

The patriarchal accusations against pacifist priests astonishingly contain an explicit mention of "Tolstoyan heresy." Fr. Viktor Burdin responds to Kirill's excommunication of "universal value" with the question "who can stop me serving God?", which another Orthodox priest from Moscow, the Italian Fr. Giovanni Guaita, often repeats in his homilies.

The real measure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive will not be military but its psychological and informational impact on public opinion, at home, in the West, and in Russia itself. Meanwhile, the aura of Ukraine’s top military man, General Zaluzhnyi, is shining almost as brightly as Zelensky’s.

There are more than raving warriors, self-centred schismatic religious leaders, mobs of diversanty, or saboteurs launching explosive drones. There are many men and women, families and children, believers and non-believers who do not care about the borders of nations and peoples, but simply want to live in peace in their own land, with their own faith.

Prigožin has left Bakhmut, reduced to a pile of rubble, giving rapid-fire interviews that look more like an acknowledgement of defeat than a proclamation of victory. If Ukraine has a clear future as a member of the Western and European communities, if Central Asia now discusses all its affairs with the great power of Beijing, Moscow must try not to resign itself to its own insignificance.

In order to prop up the spirit of Orthodox patriotism, Putin decided to return the famous icon to Kirill’s Church. It matters little if exposure in the Monastery of the Holy Trinity might turn it into dust. Using an icon to justify the sanctity of absolute power is by no means something new.

When anything can be considered a threat, it is no longer important how real this risk or effective the containment measures, the only thing that matters is to give the impression that "everything is under control".

Drones over the Kremlin may have pre-empted fireworks set to light up the sky in Moscow and a few other cities. The 9 May parade will likely be cancelled almost everywhere because of possible incidents. Yet, rather than his internal and external enemies, Putin should fear his supporters, who are increasingly active and brazen, starting with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the “cook”.

Agreements for a base on the Red Sea, arms supplies to both contenders, Wagner Company business: in the war in Sudan, Moscow consolidates its penetration in the continent. Which also has the face of Metropolitan Leonid, the "cook of Kirill".

With his blonde dreadlocks and a rocker’s leather jacket, Shaman sports the extreme, futuristic face of the Russian identity, moving away from the West by aping it in every detail, but in an "I am Russian" version. The videoclip with the new anthem that has taken Moscow by storm alternates frenzied fans and wheat fields.

As was the case in the 1990s, food becomes the dimension of identity lost and identity to be found. Average salaries drop and then the only food remains the "spirituality" of traditional moral values, relying on the miracles invoked by metropolitans and patriarchs, but entrusted to the hands of cooks left without ingredients.

As war looms over Latin Easter and Orthodox Holy Week, the philosophers of the "rebirth of the Russian idea", like Florensky, Berdyaev and Bulgakov, come to mind; they contrasted the authenticity of the Church, which announces Christian redemption, to the false ideological truth of the intelligentsia.

In Kiev while Onufryj - leader of the Orthodox jurisdiction still linked to the Moscow Patriarchate - is calling on the Ukrainian government to stop the eviction, antagonist Epifanyj has already appointed a new superior of the Monastery of the Caves. The long history of the forge of the many souls of Russian Christianity developed in the mid-11th century through the enlightened leadership of the son of the first Prince Vladimir, Jaroslav "the Wise."