The kremlin has once again used the russian orthodox church to justify the war against Ukraine and to militarize society.<\/p>\n
\u25ab\ufe0f russian propaganda outlets are widely spreading footage of church services involving russian servicemen, including directly on the front line, as well as statements by so-called \u201cmilitary priests\u201d about the need to stay with soldiers \u201cin the trenches.\u201d Alongside russian dictator vladimir putin, senior officials and representatives of the russian orthodox church \u2014 including the defense minister and metropolitans \u2014 took part in Christmas services on January 7, where the war was framed as a \u201cfight against evil\u201d and a \u201cdefense of the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u25ab\ufe0f In the speeches of church hierarchs, russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine is deliberately disguised as a \u201cspiritual mission.\u201d Religious rhetoric about a \u201choly peace,\u201d the \u201crussian world,\u201d and the \u201cdefense of orthodoxy\u201d is used, while Ukraine is groundlessly accused of \u201cpersecuting the faith.\u201d In this way, the kremlin seeks to evade responsibility for the war by shifting it into a pseudo-sacral dimension.<\/p>\n
This is a typical practice of russian propaganda \u2014 mixing religion, the army, and state ideology to legitimize violence and mobilize the population. While Christmas around the world symbolizes peace and humanity, in russia it is used as a tool to justify killings and continue aggression.<\/p>\n
The Center previously published an analytical report on the use of the russian orthodox church as a militarized instrument within russia\u2019s state propaganda system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The kremlin has once again used the russian orthodox church to justify the war against Ukraine and to militarize society. \u25ab\ufe0f russian propaganda outlets are widely spreading footage of church services involving russian servicemen, including directly on the front line, as well as statements by so-called \u201cmilitary priests\u201d about the need to stay with soldiers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":934,"footnotes":""},"categories":[934],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}