from Rogue Money:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias Kirill (Gundyayev) are celebrating the Divine Liturgy at Mount Athos in Greece Saturday to commemorate the 1,000th anniversary of a Russian monastic presence on the Holy Mountain.
Unlike Putin’s visit in 2005 when he became the first Russian head of state to visit the ancient monastic republic, this visit comes at a time when Europe is faced with a migratory and economic crisis, in the shadow of a rumored war with Russia.
Eurasianist ideologue Alexandr Dugin announced at the website of his think tank Katehon that the services with Patriarch Kirill will be broadcast live from Athos beginning at 13:00 Moscow time on Saturday, May 28. For those RogueMoney readers who have a high speed Internet connection, the link to watch live at Tsargrad TV’s Russian language channel is here (note: we will update this post with video to insert in this space when it appears online).
For an introduction to Mt. Athos and the Orthodox Christian monastic way of life there that has continued unbroken by wars, pirates or rulers’ depredations for at least twelve centuries, watch the CBS 60 Minutes documentary from 2011 with the late reporter Bob Simon here, with ‘trailers’ for this highly recommended program below:
Athos and the Symbolism of Neo-Tsarist Symphonia in Russia
That Putin would need a spiritual and physical retreat from the pressures of Moscow at a time like this is not surprising. While Russia has withstood the pressures of economic sanctions and seemingly limitless information warfare while fighting proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria, the cracks in society are starting to show.
Real hardships for working and middle class Russians due to the general global economic crisis, the collapse in trade with Europe and oil price slump are increasingly evident. However, a spirit of resistance to globalism, to the degradation and nihilism post-Western societies offer the world is also evident, with a growing number of Russians participating in the life of the Orthodox Church and new temples going up all over Moscow and other major cities.
The Russia Analyst claims no insights into the state of Mr. Putin’s soul, but even some of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s fierce critics like ex-NSA analyst John R. Schindler acknowledge that his adult return to the Orthodox Christianity of his secret baptism as an infant in the officially atheistic USSR may be authentic. The symbolism of the Patriarch and Putin visiting the Holy Mountain at the same time is clear: without contradicting the Russian Federation’s Constitution which establishes a secular state, Putin is affirming the ancient Byzantine Roman idea of symphonia, that is the State and Church working together for the spiritual and physical benefit of the people. Clearly this is a notion that predates Enlightenment ideas of a purely secular state or the oft-repeated phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ in America.
Hardliners’ Influence? Putin’s Rhetoric on NATO Gets Tougher
What is also evident from the visit of the Russian Patriarch and President to the Holy Mountain is that their pilgrimage, not visits with Greece’s elected leader Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, are the highlight of the trip. Nonetheless, Putin found the time during his press conference with Tsipras to remind the governments of Romania and Poland that hosting elements of a U.S. ballistic missile defense system (one that as we’ve discussed here, has offensive capabilities via Tomahawk-cruise missile capable launch tubes) makes them targets for Russia’s growing arsenal of hypersonic and supersonic missiles.
Putin’s tougher rhetoric about Russia being prepared to counter and if necessary take out the NATO BMD system, as well as the calls by the powerful chief of the country’s Investigative Committee (the rough equivalent to the director of the FBI) Alexander Bastrykin for Internet censorship and abandonment of what he calls “false democracy” in the face of U.S. and NATO hybrid warfare against Moscow’s national sovereignty are indeed ominous signs that the Kremlin is increasingly fed up with what it sees as Washington’s provocations.
Like Putin’s grey cardinal retired KGB/SVR Lt. Gen. Leonid Reshetnikov, Bastrykin has called for the introduction of a “national idea” in Russia that would “ideological education” of the young to ensure “destabilization won’t happen even with the most generous external funding”. Bolstering Orthodox Christianity alongside Russian patriotism and Eurasianist ideals for the non-Orthodox Christians from Russia’s extensive Muslim or Buddhist populations would be part of any coherent program of the type Reshetnikov or Bastrykin envision.
Such ideological indoctrination, in the minds of Reshetnikov or Bastrykin, would also serve the deterrence function of making clear to Russia’s enemies in the post-Western capitals that Moscow is increasingly ready for war, whereas Europe and America’s increasingly decadent populations are not prepared to endure the hardships (including radioactive fallout or at least massive casualties from a conflict that miraculously doesn’t go nuclear) that might come with an actual shooting warfare rather than just another cold war.
Of course, not everyone among the Russian elite or Moscow’s prospective partners in Europe wants to go down that road, and many remain optimistic that peace and commerce will prevail over war and subversion. For his part, Tsipras called for visa-free travel for Russians to the EU to promote tourism to Greece and said, “European security cannot be achieved without cooperation and dialogue with Russia…I don’t believe that we can move forward or ensure compliance with international law while caught in a vicious circle of sanctions, militarization and Cold War rhetoric.” But as former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke warned this month in the Huffington Post, “Putin is Being Pushed to Abandon his Conciliatory Approach to the West and Prepare for War”.
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