Go here to listen to the pod cast. The Russian Orthodox Church has always been an arm of the Russian State. As for Putin, the poor man’s Stalin, once a KGB thug, always a KGB thug.
Arm of the State
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Other than a disrespect for norms of free and popular government, Putin does not much resemble Stalin. He’s been at the helm almost as long as Stalin. The Ukraine war is the worst thing he’s done. Aside from the loss of life and property, what’s disturbing about it is the revelation that the Russian political class and the regime chatterati are shot through with pig-headed revanchism manifest in the notion that ‘must have more territory’ to go along with the 6.2 million sq miles they have already.
==
As for Kirill, here’s a precis of his ‘extremist rhetoric’ (offered without direct quotations). I’m not seeing a whole lot of there there.
==
From pulpit to propaganda machine: tracing the Russian Orthodox Church’s role in Putin’s war | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
“He’s been at the helm almost as long as Stalin. The Ukraine war is the worst thing he’s done. “
Well, there’s Chechnya too
Well, there’s Chechnya too
==
He suppressed the Chechen insurrection with less bloodshed than occurred during his predecessor’s failure to suppress it.
The renamed KGB basically controls Russia. They are in charge. And the priesthood of the ROC is honeycombed with their agents.
“He suppressed the Chechen insurrection with less bloodshed than occurred during his predecessor’s failure to suppress it.”
He vaporized Grozny … He wanted to begin his reign sending a message to any presumptive breakaways, and he succeeded. If fewer people died during his sociopathic tirade, it wasn’t due to any effort on his part.
He vaporized Grozny …
==
Grozny was a parking lot in 1995. Not his doing.
The renamed KGB basically controls Russia. They are in charge.
==
You mean they can unload Putin et al whenever they care to?
In general, I gather that we’re pressing Zelenskyy to negotiate with Putin for the sake of “peace”. We don’t like Russian ownership of Crimea or Donbas, yet we expect that Putin will be ousted as President if he loses in Ukraine. We expect that his replacement to be less “peaceful” than Putin has been.
We may require Zelenskyy to surrender the eastern- and southern-most areas formerly of Ukraine to prevent wide-spread bloodshed.
Nobody likes it much.
Of course Putin will eventually have to answer for his actions and will probably respond that he was just acting his nature as an old KGB functionary. Kirill, on the other hand, will probably smell the brimstone rather clearly as he awaits his turn as he should know better.
Looking at a map of the upper Black Sea coastline, why not make the Crimean Peninsula an international protectorate? Yalta and Sevastopol could be international cities/ports like Trieste once was.
[…] M. RennThe New Administration Does Not Think Alaska Should be a Natural History Museum – TFPThe Russian Orthodox Church Has Always Been an Arm of the Russian State – The Am CatholicMy Takeaways from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conf. – […]