What a superb article, Daniel! Bravo! I teach the history of all the East Slavic lands and, of course, of their relations with neighbours, over well over a thousand years. Like you, I am strongly anticommunist, but post-communist Russia is very different, and has reembraced its cultural roots, including Orthodox Christianity.
With your permission, I would like to include some quotes from your article on my website, with attribution of course.
The mass Russophobia in most of the West at present, including here in Australia, reflects a calamitous historical illiteracy - they all are reliving, are captives to, the Cold War (as you pointed out in a previous article). The mantra "Ukraine today, Poland and the Baltics tomorrow" is absurd, as anyone who knows history would understand. There are centuries of enmity between Poland and Russia, heavily driven by religious sectarianism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the Poles' occupation of the Kremlin in 1610-1612 and disqualification of the Polish candidates for tsar in the Time of Troubles. And from the Polish side, the Poles hugely resented being forcibly incorporated in the Russian empire from the end-18th century partitions of Poland, the Congress of Vienna of 1815, the Polish revolts of the 1830s and 1863, and attempted Russification. Whjy on earth would Putin want to reimport this festering sore?
Likewise, the Baltic states. They hated forced incorporation into the USSR in 1940 and their governments remain implacably anti-Russian.
Putin is on the same page as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("Rebuilding Russia," 1990) : the Balts are not Slavs, and the Poles and not Eastern Slavs.
A fabulous, well thought out and constructed article, Daniel. There are so many highly quotable sentences in there that I shall store it in my "goodies box" and hope that you will allow me to quote you from it in future. Well done!
It is so sad that so many have fallen for the establishment MSM propaganda that Putin is bad and Nato/Ukraine is good. President Trump has repudiated the USA’s prior provocations against Russia and is doing his best to stop the life-draining proxy war in Ukraine but the EU and Starmer want to inflame the situation, as shown by the latest Nato-supported drone attack deep inside Russia.
These warmongering idiots are acting as puppets to the globalists, e.g. BlackRock, who want to somehow defeat and pillage Russia of its immense wealth of natural resources. They are also ideologically opposed to Russia as it stands against the totalitarian western establishment’s quest for one-world governance which no western electorate has ever voted for. As with all leftist plans, they haven’t a clue how to go about it, apparently forgetting that Russia is armed to the teeth with hypersonic and ballistic nuclear weapons which the West has no defence against. What a shambles.
That is such an interesting take. It has never occurred to me that liberal leaders actually believe in any of the things they propose. I have a very hard time believing that any of them have the kind of depth that you do. For one thing they absolutely never explain WHY they want to destroy women's sports, children's health, small businesses or education. They just assume we will think it's good for us I guess?
To me the big difference between Europe and Africa as far as politics goes is that you can do all your money laundering through Europe, the Ukraine is a great recent example, while everything just disappears in Africa.
I may have fallen into the Trap of oversimplifying everything simply from exhaustion. You have given me a new outlook to consider.
Thanks Kay, I tend to consider it a combination-the cleverer ones don’t believe their stances, but many of them do. It’s a combination of sincere fools/lunatics and extreme psychopathic crooks. Ps corrected the typo on your name, apologies!
I agree with everything you say. This feels like a global Truman Show. Why doesn’t Putin drop a bomb on Zelensky? Why has the West installed and backed a clown if victory against Russia was their goal? It wouldn’t surprise me if the deep state sets off nukes in Western cities so they can blame Russian and get the global depopulation party started. Would this not be the perfect crime?
Ace, as ever, Daniel. How DUMB are leaders are. Dan fans, if you want another top Brit Substacker who casts his beady eye on current insanity, I highly recommend David McGrogan's "News from Uncibal".
This is exactly what I keep telling my dog (no one else listens to me these days!). Putin is and always has been a man who knows who he is, what he stands for, what his country is, was and will be. It's not necessary to like him or agree with everything he does - that is a silly childish western affectation. He stands firm in the face of all the western hysteria and lying and boasting and we can actually all sleep easier knowing that he is at the head of Russia - imagine if he were a Zelensky or a Trump or a Starmer.
So, another excellent article - once upon a time you would have been sitting in studios debating with blokes with pipes with Robin Day invigilating!
A magnificent and thoroughly justified rant!! It clearly was a rant, as evidenced by the failure to re-read and correct the several literary errors, but it was none the worse as a result of that failure.
Daniel is a man of my own heart. Someone determined to cast a spotlight on the increasing degeneracy and corruption of Western ‘leadership’. A ‘leadership’ whose strings are pulled by a global banking cabal which supplies and profits from the continual supply of debt which supports the ability for humanity to live a lifestyle well beyond its means, including the funding of ever more ludicrous ways with which to bring about an extermination of the species!!
A financial system now tottering on its last legs, which will shortly be replaced by the ultimate in methods of control, namely Central Bank Digital Currencies. A system based on the infinite supply of absolutely nothing, backed by nothing and which, as a result, can possess no value, other than what those in control of the supply tell us it is.
Nevertheless, we are ultimately responsible for having permitted this state of affairs to have arisen, by virtue of having failed to take sufficient interest in the creation of a financial system which ultimately benefits those who were handed the ability to create money out of thin air and then to charge interest on the lending of that thin air!!
Who are the bigger morons, us, or those we elected to hand that ability to create money out of thin air to bankers?!!
What is the rationale for charging interest on debt? To compensate for the loss of ability to use what is lent to benefit the lender and for the risk that what is lent might not repaid. What possible risk is entailed by lending something created out of thin air? Something created by the pressing of a computer keypad?
DEBT and the levying of interest thereon controls the world. All wars are bankers wars and they use them to acquire what is the only value, namely tangible items, things you can touch, analogue stuff. The reality of existence. The digital world is fantasy which provides the illusion of reality!
I didn’t read a word. And I don’t think I have to. The question is, Putin has been the most patient leader on earth. Imagine being the guy leading the whitest, most Christian nation on earth, and being pushed to the limits he’s been. If Russia had weather like. Florida, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
Politicians are the same world-wide. They share a dislike of anything that is good for their population and love those things that are good for them. Putin and Zelenskyy are creche-mates, one the Yin and the other the Yang. They thrive on the conflict of their relationship. The problem is they drag others in to participate.
I personally don't give a rat's arse about either of them, and in fact the only good I can see in this conflict is that every munition Russia uses in Ukraine is one less to use on us. Ukraine was and probably still is a morbidly corrupt country, and it seems it's gotten worse under the Z-midget. As you mention, the upper class has all the trappings of an elite that some revolutions kill. You can't have the people dying in the thousands while a few of their "betters" live in luxury and don't have any skin in the game but do profit from it immensely. I can see a French-style revolution in Ukraine if the country survives.
I can see Russia so weakened in this war that China takes the easy road to expansion and heads north. Another land war in Russia would produce horrendous casualties, but again, that's on them and the Chinese.
All this to say I'm tired of meaningless wars fought by the people while the elites and their children stay at home and attend Ivy League colleges. I agree with you that it's not my fight, and I wish it didn't involve my country's participation.
I remember the Ukraine support flag 'rash', some of which continues to this day.
It was the very same 'follow the Government' action that exploited public fear to 'do the correct thing'.
Presidente for life Volololololololololoddyymyyrrrrrr Zelenskyyyvvvv reflects the worst of the West leadership, with shallow valueless actions which certainly contributed to the massive loss of life.
Daniel is right to point out the domestic leadership - currently Mr K 'son of a tool' Starmer KC, former DPP - is prepared to do more for Ukraine than his own country.
Only in Eastern Europe do we some sort of sanity, because they know how this situation plays out.
A brief comment (and this shouldn’t be seen as support for Zelensky):
“He [Putin] has strongly advocated Christianity. This isn’t just rhetoric. The Russian Orthodox Church and faith has been restored in Russia since the Soviet system fell.”
This is actually not true. Only a tiny percentage of Russians are actually religious – the Orthodox Church is really nothing more than a decoration. A useful decoration, yes – but just a decoration. Outside Russia, it is little more than a front for the FSB. In Ukraine, the Moscow-led Orthodox Church was riddled with Russian agents. Now, maybe the rank-and-file believers actually believed, but virtually all the priests and bishops were, in substance, agents of Moscow.
As for the church itself within Russia, one difficulty Putin and the Russian government have is an inability to articulate a meaningful ideology, where before the Soviet state had communism as a form of a state religion – and so “Orthodox Christianity” (the quotes are deliberate) became a poor substitute for the discredited communism. But, it’s better than nothing.
“An ex KGB officer has actually adopted, in power, a Tsarist attitude to Orthodox Christianity.”
The difference is that nobody seriously thinks that Putin is a Christian – unlike the czars. He, perhaps, believes in some superstitions, or has some notion of his own divine destiny. But he certainly is no Christian, except for indulging in an occasional public ritual in a cathedral.
“He has strongly supported the Church in practical as well as verbal ways. It is not just talk. Funding and freedom has been offered, and Russian faith has resurged.”
It hasn’t. On the holiest of days in the Christian calendar, barely 1-3% go to church. But because Putin is doing it, so do all the bureaucrats and officials. Just like when Yeltsin liked to play tennis, all the bureaucrats and officials took up tennis.
“The Soviet persecution could not kill it, but the mere end of persecution could not have fully restored it.”
It hasn’t.
“Rightists of the mainstream and establishment persuasion in the West tell me that Putin is no Christian”
He isn’t. And the doctrine being propagated by the current Orthodox Church leadership in Moscow bears little resemblance to actual Christianity.
“and no real defender of Western history and culture.”
He is a faux defender of “traditional culture”, except that it isn’t at all obvious what this means.
“These are simply dishonest words from a personally evil dictator, designed to fool the ‘alt Right’ or the ‘woke Right’ into backing an enemy of the West.”
I personally don’t think that Putin is any more evil than any number of other dictators in Africa or the Middle East. In the “plus” column, I would put the fact that he is, as far as we can tell, not an anti-semite – a rarity for a Russian leader. He is not, as far as we know, a sadist, or is particularly fond of torture or executions of his enemies – to the extent he engages in such things, it is only because he thinks it is necessary.
“Why should we assume that Putin talks about European history, Russian history, Ukrainian history, and traditional values, without being sincere?”
I would assume he is not sincere about anything he says in public, because he does not regard lying to the public or to the West as a problem, or a sin, or a moral issue. And the Russian mentality supports him in this – most Russians will say “atta boy!” if they think the lying helps Putin achieve his objectives.
That may be, but for the absolute majority of Russians today, the Russian Orthodox Church is not much different than communist ideology was during Soviet days - just background noise that you have to nod in agreement with occasionally. I assume from your name (Elena) that you are Russian - surely you know this. Very very few Russians actually believe (or go to church, for that matter).
I am not arguing with the author about Zelensky - there is plenty to criticize there, especially lately. Though I might quibble with his (excessive) emphasis on Zelensky's acting career. Zelensky DID make a living as a TV comic, before he went into politics. Presumably Ukrainian TV viewers wanted to see slapstick low-brow comedy of the type Zelensky offered them - which is why he offered it. I am not sure I would draw deep meaning out of it - any more than Reagan was a cowboy because he played cowboy in many Westerns.
I fundamentally disagree. To me Putin seems entirely in the Tsarist mode. It might be possible to assert that almost everyone not Muslim in the modern world is not as firm in faith as they would have been two or three centuries ago, but I don’t think it’s pure pose or affectation with Putin at all. I also think Russian faith is stronger than you give it credit for. But we will see I suppose as events unfold. Certainly I think Putin is much closer to a real muscular version of Christianity than any western church currently is.
With all due respect, I believe this is mostly based on the “enemy of my enemy must be sort of my friend” sentiment. I see this in some American conservative commentary, too – if Biden (and Democrats generally, however dishonestly) DISliked Putin (they never actually disliked him, but it was useful to pretend during the Russia Collusion Hoax), therefore conservatives can find something to like in him.
I personally find quite preposterous the notion that a career KGB man suddenly discovered Christianity in his late middle age. What actually happened was that the Russian state tried to rule without an ideology for a few years, in the 1990s, and found it impractical. But all attempts to define any meaningful ideology to justify the rule of the corruptocrats failed. Hence, the state revived the Russian Orthodox Church, hoping it will do the trick.
As with any argument about things that are fundamentally unmeasurable, it is hard to “prove” one’s point. But I recall statistics that something like 1.4% of the Russians who are nominally Christian (so we are not counting Muslims here) go to church on Easter. (The number is from memory, so maybe it was actually 2.4%, but it was some very low number like that.) Yes, I suppose it is possible there are many true believers who for some reason don’t go to church, but I seriously doubt it. So this gives you at least some indication of the true state of Christianity in Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church is not really a church, and certainly not a CHRISTIAN church, in any meaningful sense of the word. It is a lot closer to a Department of Propaganda of a totalitarian state.
None of this is to meant to dispute the overall sentiment in the blog piece – I fully agree with you there. What is happening today to Britain, and most of Western Europe generally, is awful and frightening, particularly given how it is self-inflicted. It is equally frightening to think of how close we came to the same fate here, in America, were in not for the election of Trump in 2024. (By less than 2% in the popular vote!! Let’s not forget those 75 million useful idiots who voted for Kamala!)
So there but for the grace of god go we (perhaps literally by the grace of god – if that bullet trajectory had been 2-3 millimeters to the right… Even an atheist like me has to wonder about divine providence at times…)
In any case, Putin isn’t anyone’s salvation, if you live in Britain, or Germany or France. I don’t know where that salvation will come from, if it will come at all – but I am pretty sure it won’t come from Putin. So while I understand that desperate times require desperate measures, and when there is nowhere else to turn, who knows, maybe Putin might be better than the spineless kleptocrats currently ruling Western Europe… But he won’t be.
Which Politician is sincere at the end of the day, especially when they speak in public? Russia today is nothing like it was in the days of the Soviet Union, and I do think Putin is trying to promote the Russian Orthodox Church and encourage Christianity (whatever his own personal beliefs), in contrast to the Globalists who are selling us all down the river. I think Putin sees himself as a modern-day Peter The Great.
I wasn't trying to set up the dichotomy Putin=bad/Globalists=good. I was merely pointing out that there is no meaningful revival of Christianity in Russia under Putin, and his affinity and support for the Russian Orthodox Church is purely performative and opportunistic. Russia is a secular country, notwithstanding an attempt to use "Christianity" is an ersatz ideology.
That said, it is not at all obvious that any replacement of Putin would be better - if anything, such a replacement might be even more of a totalitarian.
What a superb article, Daniel! Bravo! I teach the history of all the East Slavic lands and, of course, of their relations with neighbours, over well over a thousand years. Like you, I am strongly anticommunist, but post-communist Russia is very different, and has reembraced its cultural roots, including Orthodox Christianity.
I wrote a detailed history of the long and short term events leading to Russia's invasion of Ukraine on my website - see https://freedomandheritage.org.au/russias-invasion-of-ukraine/ and have included some recent updates at the end.
With your permission, I would like to include some quotes from your article on my website, with attribution of course.
The mass Russophobia in most of the West at present, including here in Australia, reflects a calamitous historical illiteracy - they all are reliving, are captives to, the Cold War (as you pointed out in a previous article). The mantra "Ukraine today, Poland and the Baltics tomorrow" is absurd, as anyone who knows history would understand. There are centuries of enmity between Poland and Russia, heavily driven by religious sectarianism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the Poles' occupation of the Kremlin in 1610-1612 and disqualification of the Polish candidates for tsar in the Time of Troubles. And from the Polish side, the Poles hugely resented being forcibly incorporated in the Russian empire from the end-18th century partitions of Poland, the Congress of Vienna of 1815, the Polish revolts of the 1830s and 1863, and attempted Russification. Whjy on earth would Putin want to reimport this festering sore?
Likewise, the Baltic states. They hated forced incorporation into the USSR in 1940 and their governments remain implacably anti-Russian.
Putin is on the same page as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("Rebuilding Russia," 1990) : the Balts are not Slavs, and the Poles and not Eastern Slavs.
A fabulous, well thought out and constructed article, Daniel. There are so many highly quotable sentences in there that I shall store it in my "goodies box" and hope that you will allow me to quote you from it in future. Well done!
Thanks Terry, glad you liked it. 😀😀
It is so sad that so many have fallen for the establishment MSM propaganda that Putin is bad and Nato/Ukraine is good. President Trump has repudiated the USA’s prior provocations against Russia and is doing his best to stop the life-draining proxy war in Ukraine but the EU and Starmer want to inflame the situation, as shown by the latest Nato-supported drone attack deep inside Russia.
These warmongering idiots are acting as puppets to the globalists, e.g. BlackRock, who want to somehow defeat and pillage Russia of its immense wealth of natural resources. They are also ideologically opposed to Russia as it stands against the totalitarian western establishment’s quest for one-world governance which no western electorate has ever voted for. As with all leftist plans, they haven’t a clue how to go about it, apparently forgetting that Russia is armed to the teeth with hypersonic and ballistic nuclear weapons which the West has no defence against. What a shambles.
A pox upon them all.
Disengage!
After the WH visit by Zelenskyy and I looked at the history and what our other world leaders were doing, that’s when I preferred Putin
That is such an interesting take. It has never occurred to me that liberal leaders actually believe in any of the things they propose. I have a very hard time believing that any of them have the kind of depth that you do. For one thing they absolutely never explain WHY they want to destroy women's sports, children's health, small businesses or education. They just assume we will think it's good for us I guess?
To me the big difference between Europe and Africa as far as politics goes is that you can do all your money laundering through Europe, the Ukraine is a great recent example, while everything just disappears in Africa.
I may have fallen into the Trap of oversimplifying everything simply from exhaustion. You have given me a new outlook to consider.
Thanks Kay, I tend to consider it a combination-the cleverer ones don’t believe their stances, but many of them do. It’s a combination of sincere fools/lunatics and extreme psychopathic crooks. Ps corrected the typo on your name, apologies!
Really good article.
I agree with everything you say. This feels like a global Truman Show. Why doesn’t Putin drop a bomb on Zelensky? Why has the West installed and backed a clown if victory against Russia was their goal? It wouldn’t surprise me if the deep state sets off nukes in Western cities so they can blame Russian and get the global depopulation party started. Would this not be the perfect crime?
I put absolutely nothing beyond the realms of what Globalists would be prepared to do.
To paraphrase Outkast, white people killing white people, it is so insane.
Ace, as ever, Daniel. How DUMB are leaders are. Dan fans, if you want another top Brit Substacker who casts his beady eye on current insanity, I highly recommend David McGrogan's "News from Uncibal".
This is exactly what I keep telling my dog (no one else listens to me these days!). Putin is and always has been a man who knows who he is, what he stands for, what his country is, was and will be. It's not necessary to like him or agree with everything he does - that is a silly childish western affectation. He stands firm in the face of all the western hysteria and lying and boasting and we can actually all sleep easier knowing that he is at the head of Russia - imagine if he were a Zelensky or a Trump or a Starmer.
So, another excellent article - once upon a time you would have been sitting in studios debating with blokes with pipes with Robin Day invigilating!
Thanks very much. Robin Day might even have interviewed me honestly. 😂🤔
He would at least have been interested in your point of view!
A magnificent and thoroughly justified rant!! It clearly was a rant, as evidenced by the failure to re-read and correct the several literary errors, but it was none the worse as a result of that failure.
Daniel is a man of my own heart. Someone determined to cast a spotlight on the increasing degeneracy and corruption of Western ‘leadership’. A ‘leadership’ whose strings are pulled by a global banking cabal which supplies and profits from the continual supply of debt which supports the ability for humanity to live a lifestyle well beyond its means, including the funding of ever more ludicrous ways with which to bring about an extermination of the species!!
A financial system now tottering on its last legs, which will shortly be replaced by the ultimate in methods of control, namely Central Bank Digital Currencies. A system based on the infinite supply of absolutely nothing, backed by nothing and which, as a result, can possess no value, other than what those in control of the supply tell us it is.
Nevertheless, we are ultimately responsible for having permitted this state of affairs to have arisen, by virtue of having failed to take sufficient interest in the creation of a financial system which ultimately benefits those who were handed the ability to create money out of thin air and then to charge interest on the lending of that thin air!!
Who are the bigger morons, us, or those we elected to hand that ability to create money out of thin air to bankers?!!
What is the rationale for charging interest on debt? To compensate for the loss of ability to use what is lent to benefit the lender and for the risk that what is lent might not repaid. What possible risk is entailed by lending something created out of thin air? Something created by the pressing of a computer keypad?
DEBT and the levying of interest thereon controls the world. All wars are bankers wars and they use them to acquire what is the only value, namely tangible items, things you can touch, analogue stuff. The reality of existence. The digital world is fantasy which provides the illusion of reality!
I didn’t read a word. And I don’t think I have to. The question is, Putin has been the most patient leader on earth. Imagine being the guy leading the whitest, most Christian nation on earth, and being pushed to the limits he’s been. If Russia had weather like. Florida, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
Alan, you do make good points, but do read the article, it’s very very good.
Politicians are the same world-wide. They share a dislike of anything that is good for their population and love those things that are good for them. Putin and Zelenskyy are creche-mates, one the Yin and the other the Yang. They thrive on the conflict of their relationship. The problem is they drag others in to participate.
I personally don't give a rat's arse about either of them, and in fact the only good I can see in this conflict is that every munition Russia uses in Ukraine is one less to use on us. Ukraine was and probably still is a morbidly corrupt country, and it seems it's gotten worse under the Z-midget. As you mention, the upper class has all the trappings of an elite that some revolutions kill. You can't have the people dying in the thousands while a few of their "betters" live in luxury and don't have any skin in the game but do profit from it immensely. I can see a French-style revolution in Ukraine if the country survives.
I can see Russia so weakened in this war that China takes the easy road to expansion and heads north. Another land war in Russia would produce horrendous casualties, but again, that's on them and the Chinese.
All this to say I'm tired of meaningless wars fought by the people while the elites and their children stay at home and attend Ivy League colleges. I agree with you that it's not my fight, and I wish it didn't involve my country's participation.
An epic essay full of very good information.
I remember the Ukraine support flag 'rash', some of which continues to this day.
It was the very same 'follow the Government' action that exploited public fear to 'do the correct thing'.
Presidente for life Volololololololololoddyymyyrrrrrr Zelenskyyyvvvv reflects the worst of the West leadership, with shallow valueless actions which certainly contributed to the massive loss of life.
Daniel is right to point out the domestic leadership - currently Mr K 'son of a tool' Starmer KC, former DPP - is prepared to do more for Ukraine than his own country.
Only in Eastern Europe do we some sort of sanity, because they know how this situation plays out.
Thanks Andrew. Yes the Ukraine flag epidemic was clearly mass hysteria delivered by a psyop propaganda campaign.
A brief comment (and this shouldn’t be seen as support for Zelensky):
“He [Putin] has strongly advocated Christianity. This isn’t just rhetoric. The Russian Orthodox Church and faith has been restored in Russia since the Soviet system fell.”
This is actually not true. Only a tiny percentage of Russians are actually religious – the Orthodox Church is really nothing more than a decoration. A useful decoration, yes – but just a decoration. Outside Russia, it is little more than a front for the FSB. In Ukraine, the Moscow-led Orthodox Church was riddled with Russian agents. Now, maybe the rank-and-file believers actually believed, but virtually all the priests and bishops were, in substance, agents of Moscow.
As for the church itself within Russia, one difficulty Putin and the Russian government have is an inability to articulate a meaningful ideology, where before the Soviet state had communism as a form of a state religion – and so “Orthodox Christianity” (the quotes are deliberate) became a poor substitute for the discredited communism. But, it’s better than nothing.
“An ex KGB officer has actually adopted, in power, a Tsarist attitude to Orthodox Christianity.”
The difference is that nobody seriously thinks that Putin is a Christian – unlike the czars. He, perhaps, believes in some superstitions, or has some notion of his own divine destiny. But he certainly is no Christian, except for indulging in an occasional public ritual in a cathedral.
“He has strongly supported the Church in practical as well as verbal ways. It is not just talk. Funding and freedom has been offered, and Russian faith has resurged.”
It hasn’t. On the holiest of days in the Christian calendar, barely 1-3% go to church. But because Putin is doing it, so do all the bureaucrats and officials. Just like when Yeltsin liked to play tennis, all the bureaucrats and officials took up tennis.
“The Soviet persecution could not kill it, but the mere end of persecution could not have fully restored it.”
It hasn’t.
“Rightists of the mainstream and establishment persuasion in the West tell me that Putin is no Christian”
He isn’t. And the doctrine being propagated by the current Orthodox Church leadership in Moscow bears little resemblance to actual Christianity.
“and no real defender of Western history and culture.”
He is a faux defender of “traditional culture”, except that it isn’t at all obvious what this means.
“These are simply dishonest words from a personally evil dictator, designed to fool the ‘alt Right’ or the ‘woke Right’ into backing an enemy of the West.”
I personally don’t think that Putin is any more evil than any number of other dictators in Africa or the Middle East. In the “plus” column, I would put the fact that he is, as far as we can tell, not an anti-semite – a rarity for a Russian leader. He is not, as far as we know, a sadist, or is particularly fond of torture or executions of his enemies – to the extent he engages in such things, it is only because he thinks it is necessary.
“Why should we assume that Putin talks about European history, Russian history, Ukrainian history, and traditional values, without being sincere?”
I would assume he is not sincere about anything he says in public, because he does not regard lying to the public or to the West as a problem, or a sin, or a moral issue. And the Russian mentality supports him in this – most Russians will say “atta boy!” if they think the lying helps Putin achieve his objectives.
I disagree. A number of my close friends in Moscow are true Christians.
That may be, but for the absolute majority of Russians today, the Russian Orthodox Church is not much different than communist ideology was during Soviet days - just background noise that you have to nod in agreement with occasionally. I assume from your name (Elena) that you are Russian - surely you know this. Very very few Russians actually believe (or go to church, for that matter).
I disagree again. I see more and more people going to church.
However, to be a Christian does not mean going to church. I think when Christ established his church, it wasn't about a building.
By the way the author's observations about Zelensky are spot on.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree :) :)
I am not arguing with the author about Zelensky - there is plenty to criticize there, especially lately. Though I might quibble with his (excessive) emphasis on Zelensky's acting career. Zelensky DID make a living as a TV comic, before he went into politics. Presumably Ukrainian TV viewers wanted to see slapstick low-brow comedy of the type Zelensky offered them - which is why he offered it. I am not sure I would draw deep meaning out of it - any more than Reagan was a cowboy because he played cowboy in many Westerns.
Agree to disagree: my thoughts exactly!
Interestingly Zelensky was on the most watched Russian New Year show as a host. Unbelievable! He is very unlikable now.
I wish there wasn't a war. I wish the globalists left us alone.
I fundamentally disagree. To me Putin seems entirely in the Tsarist mode. It might be possible to assert that almost everyone not Muslim in the modern world is not as firm in faith as they would have been two or three centuries ago, but I don’t think it’s pure pose or affectation with Putin at all. I also think Russian faith is stronger than you give it credit for. But we will see I suppose as events unfold. Certainly I think Putin is much closer to a real muscular version of Christianity than any western church currently is.
With all due respect, I believe this is mostly based on the “enemy of my enemy must be sort of my friend” sentiment. I see this in some American conservative commentary, too – if Biden (and Democrats generally, however dishonestly) DISliked Putin (they never actually disliked him, but it was useful to pretend during the Russia Collusion Hoax), therefore conservatives can find something to like in him.
I personally find quite preposterous the notion that a career KGB man suddenly discovered Christianity in his late middle age. What actually happened was that the Russian state tried to rule without an ideology for a few years, in the 1990s, and found it impractical. But all attempts to define any meaningful ideology to justify the rule of the corruptocrats failed. Hence, the state revived the Russian Orthodox Church, hoping it will do the trick.
As with any argument about things that are fundamentally unmeasurable, it is hard to “prove” one’s point. But I recall statistics that something like 1.4% of the Russians who are nominally Christian (so we are not counting Muslims here) go to church on Easter. (The number is from memory, so maybe it was actually 2.4%, but it was some very low number like that.) Yes, I suppose it is possible there are many true believers who for some reason don’t go to church, but I seriously doubt it. So this gives you at least some indication of the true state of Christianity in Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church is not really a church, and certainly not a CHRISTIAN church, in any meaningful sense of the word. It is a lot closer to a Department of Propaganda of a totalitarian state.
None of this is to meant to dispute the overall sentiment in the blog piece – I fully agree with you there. What is happening today to Britain, and most of Western Europe generally, is awful and frightening, particularly given how it is self-inflicted. It is equally frightening to think of how close we came to the same fate here, in America, were in not for the election of Trump in 2024. (By less than 2% in the popular vote!! Let’s not forget those 75 million useful idiots who voted for Kamala!)
So there but for the grace of god go we (perhaps literally by the grace of god – if that bullet trajectory had been 2-3 millimeters to the right… Even an atheist like me has to wonder about divine providence at times…)
In any case, Putin isn’t anyone’s salvation, if you live in Britain, or Germany or France. I don’t know where that salvation will come from, if it will come at all – but I am pretty sure it won’t come from Putin. So while I understand that desperate times require desperate measures, and when there is nowhere else to turn, who knows, maybe Putin might be better than the spineless kleptocrats currently ruling Western Europe… But he won’t be.
Which Politician is sincere at the end of the day, especially when they speak in public? Russia today is nothing like it was in the days of the Soviet Union, and I do think Putin is trying to promote the Russian Orthodox Church and encourage Christianity (whatever his own personal beliefs), in contrast to the Globalists who are selling us all down the river. I think Putin sees himself as a modern-day Peter The Great.
I wasn't trying to set up the dichotomy Putin=bad/Globalists=good. I was merely pointing out that there is no meaningful revival of Christianity in Russia under Putin, and his affinity and support for the Russian Orthodox Church is purely performative and opportunistic. Russia is a secular country, notwithstanding an attempt to use "Christianity" is an ersatz ideology.
That said, it is not at all obvious that any replacement of Putin would be better - if anything, such a replacement might be even more of a totalitarian.