Putin's Invasion of Ukraine and Kyiv as a Spiritual Quest

Putin kisses icon after receiving the blessing of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch

A number of years ago I ran across a fascinating essay claiming that Vladimir Putin was engaged in serious talks with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch to restore the church to its former dominance in Russia. Putin openly expressed his willingness to fund new church construction and repair, and work closely with the Patriarch to ban from the Russian state all those forms of Christianity perceived as hostile to Orthodoxy. The JW’s were singled out, but Evangelicals were also targeted as threats because they were engaged in “proselyting” among the orthodox. In exchange for Putin’s money, the Orthodox Patriarch would restore the title “Czar” and grant it to Putin in a grand coronation ceremony to be conducted in the rebuilt orthodox cathedral in Moscow. It sounded far-fetched then, not quite so much now. Since “Vlad the Invader” (I’m happy to grant him a royal title) has moved against Ukraine, I searched long and hard for that essay, but have not been able to find it.

But I did find this recent essay on Putin’s ties to the Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill which makes a similar point, and contains a number of fascinating insights about Putin’s motives (Putin's Spiritual Destiny).

On Putin’s professed interest in Kyiv (note: Kyiv is the Ukrainian spelling—Kiev is the Russian name). . .

“The spiritual choice made by St Vladimir still largely determines our affinity today” Putin wrote only last year. “In the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kyev, `let it be the mother of all Russian cities.’”

We, in the West, tend to think about recent events strictly in geo-political terms without possessing sufficient background to the historic connection between the Russian Orthodox church and its relationship to the ancient city of Kyiv. What is now the independent nation of Ukraine was once a significant part of the ancient Russian empire. Since Kyiv was a well-known center of historic orthodoxy and piety, the Lenin-Stalin era sought to erase all historical orthodox ties to the city.

The year is 988. This is the founding, iconic act of Russian Orthodox Christianity. It was from here that Christianity would spread out and merge with the Russian love of the motherland, to create a powerful brew of nationalism and spirituality. In the mythology of 988, it was as if the whole of the Russian people had been baptised. Vladimir [the Rus] was declared a saint. When the Byzantine empire fell, the Russians saw themselves as its natural successor. They were a “third Rome”.

Soviet Communism tried to crush all this — but failed. And in the post-Soviet period, thousands of churches have been built and re-built. Though the West thinks of Christianity as something enfeebled and declining, in the East it is thriving. Back in 2019, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, boasted that they were building three churches a day. Last year, they opened a Cathedral to the Armed Forces an hour outside Moscow. Religious imagery merges with military glorification. War medals are set in stained glass, reminding visitors of Russian martyrdom. In a large mosaic, more recent victories — including 2014’s “the return of Crimea” — are celebrated. “Blessed are the peacemakers” this is not.

As described in the following, apparently Putin sees himself as destined to recover Kyiv and resurrect the Russian (not Soviet) empire. This explains, in part, Putin’s desire to occupy Kyiv precisely because of its role in Orthodox history and its mystical spirituality. Aside from attempting to divide the NATO alliance (for reasons of self-preservation and personal advantage), Putin also sees himself as the defender of Christendom, although he’s willing to use brutal military power and subjugation of millions of Georgians and Ukrainians to do so.

The Baptism of Rus is the founding event of the formation of the Russian religious psyche, the Russian Orthodox church traces its origins back here. That’s why Putin is not so much interested in a few Russian-leaning districts to the east of Ukraine. His goal, terrifyingly, is Kyev itself.

[Putin] was born in Leningrad — a city that has reclaimed its original saint’s name — to a devout Christian mother and atheist father. His mother baptised him in secret, and he still wears his baptismal cross. Since he became President, Putin has cast himself as the true defender of Christians throughout the world, the leader of the Third Rome. His relentless bombing of ISIS, for example, was cast as the defence of the historic homeland of Christianity.  And he will typically use faith as a way to knock the West, like he did in this speech in 2013:

“We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.”

The essay cautions us to keep this connection in mind . . .

Such is the centrality of Ukraine in general, and Kyev in particular, to the imagination of the Russian church, they have been prepared to fracture the centuries old alliance of Orthodoxy. Again and again, it’s all about Ukraine, the imagined site of the mother church of the Rus. . . .

The Western secular imagination doesn’t get this. It looks at Putin’s speech the other evening, and it describes him as mad — which is another way of saying we do not understand what is going on. And we show how little we understand by thinking that a bunch of sanctions is going to make a blind bit of difference. They won’t. “Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space” Putin said. That’s what this is all about, “spiritual space” — a terrifying phrase steeped in over a thousand years of Russian religious history.

Let us pray for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, who face the armies of “Vlad the Invader” and the all horrors which go with it. Putin is a criminal autocrat who bows before the picture of Peter the Great which adorns his study—seeing himself as the one chosen to restore the empire which was lost. While Putin decries the “secular” West (seeing himself as the loyal son of a church openly hostile to the five sola evangelicalism of the Reformation and those who seek to spread it), he and his oligarch cronies rob the Russian Federation blind.

Meanwhile, the Patriarch Kirill provides Putin with a historical narrative and spiritual cover. May the fantasies of “Vlad the Invader” die at the hands at the brave Ukrainians!