ICC NOTE: Vladimir Putin is no true defender of Christianity and traditional values as he would have the world believe. His only true allegiance is to his hold on power and maintaining Russian relevancy in the 21st century. statistics inside his own country would be a strong indicator that he does not truly care for promoting faith based values. Those only matter when it is in his best interest, especially around election season or when it is required during a foreign endeavor (Crimea, Syria). The passage of the Yarovaya laws essentially banning evangelism under the guise of anti-terror is a prime example of how he is far from the champion of Christendom or how Russia is considered the third Rome. 

8/1/2016 Russia (Daily Signal) – It’s easy to see why Vladimir Putin has emerged as the lodestar of certain elements of the political right across the West. Russia’s president poses as the champion of nationalism vs. rampant transnationalism, of Christianity vs. secularism, and of European identity in general.

These are battles that set conservatives’ teeth on edge. The political left in the West has for decades been relentless in its support for global governance, for limiting Christianity’s moral imprint on policymaking, and for stigmatizing the West in general.

But conservatives can certainly find a better champion for these causes than the former KGB agent who publicly pines for the supranational Soviet Union, presides over a society replete with social ills, and does not miss an opportunity to promote Russia not as a Western power but as an Asian one.

It is an astonishing trifecta that Putin has worked very hard to accomplish.

On transnationalism, for example, Putin has posed as an enthusiastic supporter of the United Kingdom leaving that most dysfunctional of supranational organizations, the European Union. “No one likes to feed and subsidize weaker countries and be a caretaker all the time,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying.

On Christianity, when Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church pleaded with Putin to become the defender of the Christian faith around the world, Putin reassured him that “you needn’t have any doubt that that’s the way it will be,” according to Russia’s Interfax.

With religion, Putin is relying on more than his own propaganda. Since the 1500s, Russia has put forward the vague notion that it is the “Third Rome”—the rightful successor to Rome and Byzantium as the center of Christianity. The claim was supposedly first made by the monk Filofei of the Pskov-Eliazarov monastery in two epistles which, unsurprisingly for Russia, have gone missing.

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