The Russian World

Trying not to limit himself to the usual statements of state propaganda amid the universal conflict between Russia and the West, the Patriarch of Moscow spoke a few days ago in St Petersburg using philosophical and literary arguments to further explain the reasons why Russia today feels called to spread the “great values” that universal society has seemingly abandoned.

The first visit of a Russian leader to the then capital Karakorum took place in 1247, when the whole of Russia and the whole of Asia were subjugated to the Great Khan Baty, Genghis Khan's heir. Putin needs to show himself on international stages, and Ulan-Bator is a much more convenient location than China, where the Russian inevitably appears as a subject. As the troubled affair of the Siberia-2 gas pipeline shows.

Both the mouthpieces of Russia’s rulers and most opposition voices in Moscow reacted surprisingly as one to the arrest in France of Russian Internet tsar, to defend freedom of expression and communication. This is a sign that the ultimate weapon of war is not the assault drone or the nuclear bomb, but ideologies that distort reality.

The attempted coup that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 2000, the 2004 Beslan children's massacre:Three summer anniversaries that are forcing Russians to rethink the uncertain evolution of their destiny.

Rereading its long history, the conquest of the “thousand square kilometers” of the Kursk region by the Ukrainian army also has symbolic significance, even before the military or diplomatic gains that might result. It is a way of reaffirming Kiev's historic superiority over Moscow. Just as the Russians open a grand new complex in Sevastopol in Crimea.

For the philosopher Nemtsev, a latent tendency towards violence has become a pivotal tool to regain what has been lost. Civilians become "quasi-soldiers", who engage in ad hoc individual and group training. Even everyday clothing comes with a war theme, like tactical gloves and protective knee pads. War is a key aspect of Russian literature, art and culture.

In Sevastopol, celebrations for the feast of the Baptism of Kievan Rus' have provided an opportunity to cover the unity between Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia with a Trinitarian aura. Likewise, the date has allowed Moscow to pull off a sensational exchange of political prisoners with Germany and the United States to rid Russia of its most notorious "foreign agents" who "disturbed internal peace" even from their prison cells.

While the average Russian is not in support the current state of action, neither can they counter it, imobilized by dread at the possibile outcomes of the war: defeat would result in panic, but victory could destabilise social relations. The incognito of the post war period, whatever the outcome of the current events.

For the historian of ideas Mikhail Maiatsky, Putin's Russia has "erased philosophy", replacing it with a pseudo-scientific patriotic ideology, based on the arbitrary rereading of Russian and universal history. A focus on existentialist thinker Ivan Ilyin is not meant to reflect on the meaning of ongoing tragedies. An “aesthetics of renaissance” on which Alexei Losev wrote in the 1980s is more urgent than ever.

Just as the bombing was underway on the treatment site for young Ukrainian cancer patients, the exhibition extolling 'Russia without end' closed (to reopen in permanent form) in Moscow. While internal successes are praised, external extermination is commented on with cynical indifference: 'It's war, there's nothing special about it'.

In Moscow, one can frequently hear people ask: “Are you with Biden or Trump?”, not to so much for ideological or geopolitical reasons, but for a mysterious sense of attraction and repulsion towards the great enemy, which in many respects is perceived as a Big Brother.

Like Crimea, Korea is key to destabilising Asia as well as Europe, amid permanent tensions and growing winds of war elsewhere. This seems to be the real purpose of Putin's visits, which from China and Uzbekistan to Korea and Vietnam are part of a plan for a new "world order" while trying to instil fear in both East and West.