As Russia increasingly seeks to reframe its invasion of Ukraine as a holy war, Vladimir Putin has been declared the chosen one to defeat the “antichrist” and Russian priests have been deployed to the frontline to bolster morale among the troops they now refer to as “soldiers of Christ.”
But a Russian priest unwittingly exposed the Kremlin’s true attitude to the troops by baptizing them in body bags this week.
Viktor Ivanov, a priest for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ufa, detailed his excursion into the so-called “special military operation” zone on social media, sharing photos of a baptism that were likely intended as an uplifting PR effort but came off more as a vote of no-confidence.
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While visiting Russian positions on the front line, he wrote, “A strong man approached. … Modestly, as if embarrassed, he looks at me and timidly asks: ‘Father, our fighter wanted to be baptized. Is that possible to do?’”
Ivanov said he sprung into action after realizing there may not be another chance to perform the baptism, asking the troops to search for a basin to fill with water.
But “not a single basin was found,” he said. Instead, the troops found him polyethylene bags—the black ones meant for the bodies of the dead. And then the “long-awaited” baptism was able to go ahead and the soldier’s eyes lit up in recognition of the “great event,” Ivanov wrote.
Sure, “the black polyethylene bags that were used as the baptismal vessels were intended for cargo 200,” he said, using a military code word for the bodies of troops killed in action. But “this baptism had its own symbolism.”
The bizarre baptism came as Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, ramped up his support for the war Tuesday by claiming Putin is the chosen one to fight against the “antichrist.”
In a speech before the 24th Congress of the World Russian People's Council, Putin’s holy man argued there were “a lot” of signs to indicate the “end of the world” was near—and the Russian leader is the only one who can stop it, a fact which makes other world leaders jealous.
“The example of Russia as a contemporary nation with developed science, technology and education, headed by a president who openly proclaims his faith forces many in the West to ask themselves, ‘why isn’t it like that with us?’” he said.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church is not the only one trying to rewrite the Kremlin’s narrative on the war. While Moscow spent the first several months after the full-scale invasion claiming Russian troops had been sent in to stop “Nazis” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, that version largely failed to gain traction among the wider public as more and more reports emerged of Holocaust survivors being driven out of their homes or bombed by the same Russian troops supposedly fighting “Nazis.”
Putin’s repeated claim that the war was necessary to stop NATO expansion also flopped, as even some pro-Kremlin military bloggers noted that Moscow’s aggression had actually resulted in NATO strengthening and getting new members.
Now, according to a rather batshit op-ed penned by a Russian official this week, the Kremlin’s new stated goal appears to be the “de-Satanization” of Ukraine.
Alexei Pavlov, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, claimed in an op-ed in the Arguments and Facts newspaper that as the war drags on, there is “more and more” evidence of cults in Ukraine.
Bizarrely, he went on to argue that Ukrainian leaders who took over after Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanokovych was ousted in 2014 had been tasked by the West with “recalibrating” the brains of Ukrainian citizens using mysterious “psychotechnologies.”
The op-ed, titled “What Is Cooking in the ‘Witch’s Cauldron.’ Neo-pagan cults Are Gaining Strength in Ukraine,” ended with the declaration: “I believe that with the continuation of the special military operation, it is becoming more and more urgent to carry out the de-Satanization of Ukraine.”
