The Russian World

The "religion of fire" has devastated and destroyed hundreds of churches, while Kirill has announced a new plan to restore buildings destroyed by bombs, he prayed for.

The death of Gorbachev and Queen Elizabeth, the Pope in Central Asia, the war in the Caucasus and the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Xi Jinping's trip: all events that evoke the end of a era, to make way for a world as yet to be described.

Without “foreign agents” Russia would not be Russia, starting with the metropolitans sent by Constantinople to Christianise Kievan Rus'. Perhaps no country can truly be itself without influences from near and far.

Opening up to religious freedom was not part of the initial reform programme. It was the events following the Černobyl disaster that forced the secretary-president to change his attitude to the point of reaching the harmony he established with John Paul II. But the Russians blamed him for the end of the USSR and renunciation of its role as a world power.

In two recent speeches President Putin and Moscow Patriarch Kirill speak again of the war not just against Ukraine but the entire West, with its model of society that places "absolute value on individual choice." A political, moral and spiritual challenge.

In Russia, Western sanctions are starting to bite. Putin and his acolytes have de facto privatised the country, and consider it their property. The ongoing transformation is falling on the majority of the population, deprived of any say in the matter.

Following in the footsteps of John Paul II, Francis is set visit the former Soviet republic from 13 to 15 September to take part in the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. His agenda includes a meeting with Kazakh President Tokayev while a second tête-à-tête with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill is a real possibility.

A moral counter-revolution, as some Russian media call it, is the global and declared aim of the war in Ukraine; for this reason, it has touched a sensitive nerve in the West, much more than the geographical proximity between NATO forces and those of neo-Soviet Russia.

Exactly one hundred years ago more than 300 distinguished representatives of the scientific, literary and artistic intelligentsia were expelled from Soviet Russia to Germany.They saved Russian culture from erasure. Even today because of the "Ukrainian revolution" thousands of teachers, artists and scholars from various fields have fled the country. Will they be able to do the same?

More than war, prison camps and food, what has revived Moscow's past is the unbearable illusion of moral and religious superiority, one that seeks to celebrate the ability of Russians to unite in solidarity and support for the country's leaders, proclaiming the end of libertarian individualism that ruined the souls of depraved Westerners.

The great ideal of peace is anchored to unquestionable values such as the absolute dignity of human beings, the superiority of international law, and even mutual economic dependence. Yet we find ourselves once again discussing the principles that have always incited the powerful to war: the affirmation of one's national and cultural identity, the defence of one's territorial and political interests, and the rejection of economic dependence on international potentates.

Moscow today is complaining that its culture is being ostracised. Yet as early as during Kyivan Rus’, the Russians have removed any reference to the “Mother Church” in Byzantium, already victim of an ancient “cancel culture”. East and West, Russia, America and Europe, are all united by the self-destructive madness of “rewriting history”, and the ongoing war is nothing more than everyone punishing everyone else.