Dhe war propaganda in Moscow is increasingly relying on religion in order to continue to convince the Russian population of the necessity of the Ukraine war, despite the withdrawal from conquered Ukrainian territories and the stalled military offensive. The topic is not new, but the quantity and quality of religiously connoted propaganda in Russia have changed significantly in recent months. At the beginning of the all-out attack on Ukraine, religion played a role mainly within the framework of the concept of the “Russian world”, because the Orthodox faith and the Orthodox Church are an important pillar of this neo-imperialist ideology, along with the Russian language, culture and history.
It is in this sense that the theme of “orthodoxy” emerged in Putin’s speech to the nation on February 21, 2022, intended to prepare Russians for the impending attack. As proof that “Ukraine has never had a solid tradition of its own authentic statehood,” the President pointed out that centuries ago people in Ukraine had called themselves “Russians” and “Orthodox”. He was alluding to the Cossacks who, in the mid-17th century, called on the Russian tsar to go to war against Poland-Lithuania, with the result that since then Kyiv and the Ukraine east of the Dnieper River have belonged to the tsarist empire.