Vladimir Putin’s Holy War

What happens when Church and State work in concert.

Note: The following is the transcript for a podcast episode from En Route. You can listen to the podcast here or use the link to Spotify below.

It’s February 21, 2022. Nearly 200,000 Russian soldiers sit at three sides of the Russian border with Ukraine. In three days, missiles will start hitting targets in major Ukrainian cities. As the world waits, it’s on this evening that Russian President Vladimir Putin will give a long rambling address to the nation. The speech is hard-core Russian nationalism. One of the main thrusts of the speech is where he called Ukraine a fiction created by Vladimir Lenin. Somewhere in the address, he says the following:

Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians.

-Vladimir Putin, February 21, 2022

What did this quote mean? Is it that he thinks Ukraine is really Russian? Yes. In fact, the word Ukraine in Russian…