Ukraine’s Moves Against Orthodoxy Make Conflict There ‘a Religious War,’ Dugin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 21 – Aleksandr Dugin, the neo-Eurasianist writer whose ideas have had a powerful influence on Vladimir Putin, says that Kyiv’s moves to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church unless it breaks more completely with the Moscow Patriarchate have transformed the conflict in Ukraine into “a religious war.”

            On his telegram channel, the writer said that “Orthodoxy will return to the holy land of Kyiv only together with our tanks” because “the war is increasingly taking on a religious character. Russia is fighting for Christ, under the banner of Christ and with Christ in its heart” (t.me/Agdchan/17654 and business-gazeta.ru/news/645276).

            Dugin called Ukraine’s latest moves against the Moscow church “the logical end of the rule of the Nazi junta” and said that Kyiv will now “begin to take away churches, disperse monasteries, arrest clergy and persecute believers” and put in place of the true church “a post-modern simulacrum” that will promote “liberal perversions and pseudo-pagan cults.”

            And “this orgy,” one promoted by the Anglo-Americans who are guiding Kyiv in its actions “will acquire special scope and intensity,” a development that Dugin argues “can only be stopped by military means.” His words are likely to inform Moscow’s propaganda not only in Russia but in the West as Putin seeks an alliance with fundamentalists there.