Because we have the attention span of 1 season of Married At First Sight, we don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this.
In 988AD, Vladimir the Great, whom Putin takes his name from, mass baptised 1000 Russians at the River Nee-Proh in what has become the founding spiritual moment in Orthodox Russian Christianity as the moment Russia became Christian and led to a cultural narrative structure that Moscow is the third Rome and was a homeland for Christianity.
What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people.
Putin has spent billions rebuilding the Churches smashed down by Communism and uses his relationship with the Church for political advantage. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church.
Recently the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branchbecause they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.
If Moscow is the third Rome, Kyiv is the second Jerusalem.
Putin sees himself as part of a long line of Christian Defenders of the true faith.
A new angry white Christianity is erupting here with intense violence, and misreading the drivers of Putin means we will fail at stopping him.
Putin has clearly been planning this for some time and I think the trigger was the attempted coup last month in Kazakhstan.
I think the Ukraine is just the beginning and any sense that the Ukraine is ‘winning’ is optimistic in the extreme.
If Putin is doing this for God and the soul of Mother Russia, the dead are evidence of faith, not failure!
Next stop will be Bosnia/Herzegovina…
As The World Watches Ukraine, Possibility Of Disintegration Looms In Bosnia
…in 2016 Putin started building a Doomsday bunker.
In 2017 he saw Dr Strangelove for the first time ever with Director Oliver Stone.
Last year he completed his Doomsday Bunker and this week he was apparently there.
It seems odd that he is threatening nuclear strikes and using his Doomsday Bunker the moment it became available.
The West needs to tread very carefully here.
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Craziness begets craziness I guess otherwise Putin is just doing what anyone who gets surrounded by enemies does…just trying to stay alive.
Interesting article in regards Russia’s potential long term problem in Siberia. Can they hang onto the territory east of the Urals if China stops the Taiwan egocentric focus to a strategic focus on energy, raw material and water supplies.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/28022022-russia-and-china-arent-the-natural-allies-many-assume-them-to-be-oped/
“The border, all 2,738 miles of it, is the legacy of the Convention of Peking of 1860 and other unequal pacts between a strong, expanding Russia and a weakened China after the Second Opium War. (Other European powers similarly encroached upon China, but from the south. Hence the former British foothold in Hong Kong, for example.)”
China does not “need” Taiwan as there are no resources there. They simply want it for egocentric purposes.
However China have never as yet laid claim to the lands lost the Russia over the years (especially the 1860 Treaty of Peking)
In that treaty China recognised Russia as master of all the lands on the left bank of the Amur River as well as of those between the Ussuri River and the Pacific Ocean, thereby allowing Russia to construct the city of Vladivostok and become a major power in the northern Pacific region.
So will the smiling Chinese stab the Russians in the back and drive northwards? Will they then drive westwards to capture all of Siberia to the Ural Mountains? After all, more easily to capture material riches in a lightly defended land (whilst Russia is focused westwards) than a doubtful seaborne assault on a pimple on their east buttock for no conceivable benefit except ego stoking.
Caesar Putin needs to watch his friends.
Gerrit – Thanks for flagging this
Agree that this is about Russian expansionism (likely in response to perceived existential threat). Whether Putin’s motivation is his faith and/or dreams of reinvigorating a Russian empire, this looks like the last throw of the dice by the autocrat of a dying empire. There is a very real risk of ‘gambling for resurrection’ (committing geopolitical suicide for fear of death). This is not to imply that Putin is crazy, rational individuals can still destroy their own societies (see The Fog of War).
I’d ease off the ‘angry white Christianity’ that’s an american lens. Putin shows little concern outside of ethnic Russians and that could be a mobilising ploy.
Sanctions look set to crush the Russian economy (and ripple around the world) the question is how Putin will respond and given the glee of the reinvigorated Neocon hawks in Washington, whether the West gives him a face-saving off-ramp that he wants to take.
And we are currently underestimating the further radicalisation of fighters rushing to Ukraine.With no visa entry to expedite fighters , there will be no records for governments when the inevitable white supremacists attracted there come home.
In California, 3 men arrested for violent attacks on counterprotesters at an anti Muslim rally were trained by the Azov Battallion , embedded in the Ukrainian army.
The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend
“Bierwirth said Azov Battalion, now a piece of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for neo-Nazi symbolism and ideology and has participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacist organizations.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/10/29/three-members-rise-above-movement-arrested-california-fourth-sought-fugitive-turns-himself
WISHFUL THINKING GERRIT, dream on.
Be nice if you could dispel the notion rationally and with conviction. Why the shouting? You sound like Chamberlain and his “peace in our time” paper waving moment. Try thinking globally strategic.
Kazakhstan is potentially another flash point. Chinese have been taking water from the Ile River for years to provide for expanded rice farming in the Ile Valley. Effectively leading to the drying up of Lake Balkhash. A lake that Kazakhstan needs water from for its own population.
“The Ili River valley is one of the most fertile in Xinjiang. A reduction in water consumption might be achievable with new, efficient technologies and by planting crops less thirsty than rice. That does not appear to be on the table. Instead, the authors cite Chinese plans for more rice production by “continued conversion of scrub and grassland into irrigated agricultural fields.”
https://eurasianet.org/chinas-water-use-threatens-kazakhstans-other-big-lake
“This time the source of the problem is also clear, though the lack of will in China may be insurmountable with Beijing on the backfoot in Xinjiang and trying to steer international attention to its Belt and Road global development initiative (which, other researchers have warned, raises a host of water-related worries of its own). Similar concerns plague the Irtysh, the other major river flowing from China into Kazakhstan, near the border with Mongolia.”
But ignore the problems created by China on Russians spheres of influence if you like. Wont make then disappear.
Effects of a Nuclear Winter on the planet, on the world
Underestimate this man at your own peril he is Hitler the second REINCARNATED
and here’s me thinking he was stalin……………….yawnnnnnn
I think NZders need to prepare themselves for Herr Ardern signing us on to send in NZ Troops for an Allied NATO, US, Ukraine Peace-Keeping Force in the Ukraine.
She is dodgy as and desperate.
I fear you may be right denny….
only for ‘humanitarian’ missions though…YEAH RIGHT