New Russian icons featuring war “heroes”

In the north-western region of Pskov, the governor is sanctifying the “special military operation” with two icons commissioned for a historic cathedral, depicting two local soldiers who died in Ukraine at the feet of great Orthodox patrons. The iconographers justify themselves by saying that by not depicting them as saints, “the dogmatic canons are respected”. Former patriarchate spokesman Chapnin: “They look like images from Stalin's metro”.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The governor of the Pskov region in north-western Russia, Mikhail Vedernikov, has begun advertising on his Telegram channel the production of new sacred icons with images of heroes participating in the Svo, the special military operation in Ukraine. These are not generic depictions of groups of combatants, which could refer to older models of Russia's holy wars, but specific individuals belonging to the 76th division of the Russian army, which mainly consists of soldiers from Pskov and the surrounding areas, many of whom died in Ukraine in 2023 during the counterattack by Kiev's forces.

This is certainly not the first attempt to “sacralise the Svo”; however, it has never been done in such an explicit and belligerent manner, which for many commentators represents not so much the state's support for the Church, but the birth of a veritable “new religion” based on Russian Orthodoxy. The governor assures that “anyone can bow down in veneration of these sacred images, praying for all our fighters who are defending our homeland”, without specifying that prayer can only be addressed to saints canonised by the Church, which for the moment has not yet included any soldiers from the ongoing war.

Attached to the war-iconographic advertisement post is a video showing two icons collected in a devotional casket, one representing Saint Nicholas Možajskij, the famous image of the saint of Myra and Bari, patron saint of Russia, in a 14th-century wooden statue, at the feet of which stands a small figure of Corporal Nikolaj Savčenko. The second icon depicts the holy martyr Rustik, killed by the pagans of Gaul in the early centuries of Christianity, alongside Lieutenant Ruslan Sheika, who also died in Ukraine in 2023. The icons were placed in the Cathedral of Saints Cosmas and Damian at Primostye, the spectacular bridge that dominates the centre of the city of Pskov.

It is one of the oldest churches in the region, dating back to 1462, a federal cultural heritage site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, restored by Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov), Vladimir Putin's “spiritual father” and now head of the Church in Crimea, who also appears to be the great inspiration behind the war icons. The parish priest of the cathedral, Father Mikhail Fedorov, is also the head of the prison chaplaincy service of the Pskov eparchy, where he carries out the mission of “converting” criminal prisoners, turning them into staunch defenders of the Russian cause in Ukraine.

There are plans to create other icons with images of patriotic heroes, but some of their families refuse to grant permission for their images to be used. There is debate about the appropriateness of this “quasi-canonisation” of deceased soldiers, but the iconographers involved in this work assure us that “dogmatic canons are respected”, because the halo of sanctity is not drawn above the soldiers' heads and they are not the only figures depicted, as was the case in ancient icons where saints are venerated by historical figures at their feet. The meaning of these images, according to one of the authors who remains anonymous (like the ancient iconographers, but for fear of censorship), is to “emphasise man's relationship with God and remind ourselves and others what is worth praying for”.

The director of the Centre for Orthodox Studies at Fordham University in the United States, former spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate Sergei Chapnin, invites us to distinguish between the “formal correctness” of war icons and their “appropriateness”, because “it is one thing to be St George the Victorious, but quite another to fight not for the kingdom of God, but for the empire of men”. Even from an aesthetic point of view, it is not a great work, because modern images of patriotic saint-heroes ‘resemble more the images of the metro in Stalin's time than the mosaics of the ancient churches of Pskov’.