Overview
- The remarks were delivered in a small church near Moscow to military personnel and their families and released as a roughly two‑minute Kremlin video to about two dozen attendees.
- Putin invoked Jesus as savior and said Russian soldiers act “in the name of the Lord” to defend the fatherland, while avoiding a direct reference to the war in Ukraine.
- Orthodox theologian Natallia Vasilevich condemned the language as blasphemy and accused Putin of instrumentalizing religion to justify the conflict.
- Coverage highlighted a disconnect between the religious framing and wartime realities, citing reports of dozens of clergy killed and hundreds of damaged Ukrainian religious sites since 2022, including a priest recently killed in Kherson region.
- Further criticism followed, with a Ukrainian priest labeling Putin the “Anti‑Christ” and other church leaders accusing him of distorting the Christian faith as part of a longstanding narrative linking state aims to religious themes.