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Putin's Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War
Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War
Russia’s aggression against its neighbor isn’t just power politics and geostrategy, it’s about core issues of faith and identity
John Schindler
It’s finally happened. Early today, after weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on his neighbor and launched a major, multi-pronged invasion into Southern, Eastern, and Northern Ukraine. This is just the first military phase of many to come, only a small amount of the vast forces that Moscow has marshalled on Ukraine’s frontiers have entered action yet. Any judgements about the progress of the war would be premature (though this newsletter will be providing regular assessments on this conflict, Europe’s most important war since 1945).
What needs to be established is why Putin has done this. Unleashing full-scale war here represents an enormous political gamble – failure in Ukraine could unravel his two-decade rule over Russia – from a leader who’s generally been tactically adventurous yet strategically cautious. Most Western “experts” got this wrong and many seem stunned that the Kremlin has really started a major war. As Top Secret Umbra previously noted, this represents a collective failure of the Western elite, which so misread Putin, despite his being plain about his contempt for the United States and NATO for 15 years, as well as his dismissive attitude towards Ukraine as more a “region” than a bona fide country:
Putin waged a hot war of aggression against Ukraine in 2014-15, starting with Russia’s theft of Crimea by GRU’s Little Green Men, followed by the seizure of a good-sized chunk of Ukraine’s southeast by the Russian military. That conflict has ever entirely faded out, and Moscow’s de facto holding on to pieces of Ukraine means that country will never be allowed to enter NATO. Given the recent past, and the not-entirely-frozen conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, how on earth can anybody be surprised that Putin might attack Ukraine again?
Moscow told us, most of us just didn’t bother to listen. If Western elites listened at all, they dismissed Putin’s strange analysis as the ravings of a madman, or at least someone not operating in our Western unipolar reality. As this newsletter explained further:
... snip
We should not indulge Muscovite conspiracy theories nor countenance Russian aggression. However, the facts are plain enough. Simply put, by recognizing the OCU and hailing its creation, Washington changed the Kremlin’s game in Ukraine, making Putin’s long-term plans for his neighbor untenable. Without a united Orthodox Church across the former lands of Rus, answering to Moscow, the “Russian World” concept falls apart. Every secular geostrategic challenge cited as a reason for Putin’s aggression – NATO expansion, Western military moves, oil and gas politics – existed in 2014, yet Putin then chose to limit his attacks on Ukraine to Crimea and the Southeast. What’s changed since then that makes his effort to subdue all Ukraine seem like a good idea in the Kremlin? The creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, with official American backing, is the difference, and Moscow believes this was all a nefarious U.S. plot to divide world Orthodoxy at Russia’s expense. Clearly Putin has decided that reclaiming Ukraine and its capital, “the mother of Russian cities,” for Russian Orthodoxy is worth a major war. Make no mistake, this is a religious war, even if almost nobody in the West realizes it.
More: https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/putins-attack-on-ukraine-is-a-religious?utm_source=url
Russia’s aggression against its neighbor isn’t just power politics and geostrategy, it’s about core issues of faith and identity
John Schindler
It’s finally happened. Early today, after weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on his neighbor and launched a major, multi-pronged invasion into Southern, Eastern, and Northern Ukraine. This is just the first military phase of many to come, only a small amount of the vast forces that Moscow has marshalled on Ukraine’s frontiers have entered action yet. Any judgements about the progress of the war would be premature (though this newsletter will be providing regular assessments on this conflict, Europe’s most important war since 1945).
What needs to be established is why Putin has done this. Unleashing full-scale war here represents an enormous political gamble – failure in Ukraine could unravel his two-decade rule over Russia – from a leader who’s generally been tactically adventurous yet strategically cautious. Most Western “experts” got this wrong and many seem stunned that the Kremlin has really started a major war. As Top Secret Umbra previously noted, this represents a collective failure of the Western elite, which so misread Putin, despite his being plain about his contempt for the United States and NATO for 15 years, as well as his dismissive attitude towards Ukraine as more a “region” than a bona fide country:
Putin waged a hot war of aggression against Ukraine in 2014-15, starting with Russia’s theft of Crimea by GRU’s Little Green Men, followed by the seizure of a good-sized chunk of Ukraine’s southeast by the Russian military. That conflict has ever entirely faded out, and Moscow’s de facto holding on to pieces of Ukraine means that country will never be allowed to enter NATO. Given the recent past, and the not-entirely-frozen conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, how on earth can anybody be surprised that Putin might attack Ukraine again?
Moscow told us, most of us just didn’t bother to listen. If Western elites listened at all, they dismissed Putin’s strange analysis as the ravings of a madman, or at least someone not operating in our Western unipolar reality. As this newsletter explained further:
... snip
We should not indulge Muscovite conspiracy theories nor countenance Russian aggression. However, the facts are plain enough. Simply put, by recognizing the OCU and hailing its creation, Washington changed the Kremlin’s game in Ukraine, making Putin’s long-term plans for his neighbor untenable. Without a united Orthodox Church across the former lands of Rus, answering to Moscow, the “Russian World” concept falls apart. Every secular geostrategic challenge cited as a reason for Putin’s aggression – NATO expansion, Western military moves, oil and gas politics – existed in 2014, yet Putin then chose to limit his attacks on Ukraine to Crimea and the Southeast. What’s changed since then that makes his effort to subdue all Ukraine seem like a good idea in the Kremlin? The creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, with official American backing, is the difference, and Moscow believes this was all a nefarious U.S. plot to divide world Orthodoxy at Russia’s expense. Clearly Putin has decided that reclaiming Ukraine and its capital, “the mother of Russian cities,” for Russian Orthodoxy is worth a major war. Make no mistake, this is a religious war, even if almost nobody in the West realizes it.
More: https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/putins-attack-on-ukraine-is-a-religious?utm_source=url
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