They are also openly supporting invasion of Ukraine as a kind of "holy war".
The russian word for "non-government organization" is "foreign agent".
This has led to some interesting quirks historically. For example, in Japan, the local Orthodox Church is the offshoot of the Russian one, and at the time of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, it had a Russian archbishop heading it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Japan. Upon hearing of the declaration of war, the Japanese clerics under him asked him what they are supposed to do. He told them to pray for the Emperor of Japan and the victory of his hosts, since, as Orthodox, it was their duty to pray for their country's ruler and army during a war. He himself, being a Russian subject, could not do so, but also could not openly pray for the victory of Russia in the war while remaining in his position as the head of the Church of Japan; and he believed that it would be inappropriate for him to abscond from that duty and to flee to Russia. So he gave his bishops the blessing to pray according to the canon, and excused himself from public services for the duration of the war.
partly so - in this world, among the worldly ways, the temporal ruler has authority. However, the bargain is.. at birth, at death, in times of great peril, or any day when there are hungry, poor, afflicted, ill or outcast citizens (every day in other words) the temporal ruler has agreed to acknowledge One God (not the person ruling) and implement the words of the Christian canon .. to attend to those who are needy, sanctify marriage, watch over the helpless and bring food and medicine to those that need it.
In the modern times of post-industrial plenty, these crucial agreements are often overlooked. Yet this is how civilization grew from the barbarian times in the Western world.
It was a western lie that Putin wants to invade Ukraine up to the second it happened, and then it became obviously the only possible choice overnight.
The most important thing to understand about Russians is that they were trained for centuries to be passive cynical conformists. It mostly worked. There are some actual nationalists who want the war. But most Russians view them as madmen who are "sticking out" and will suffer for it eventually. It's as stupid to be openly unpatriotic as it is to be too patriotic. See girkin.
Most Russians just subconsciously detect the safest position and orient themselves accordingly. Not because of conscious fear, simply by default. If Navalny became Russian president - the next day 80% of Russians would be completely persuaded they were always against the war. Orthodox church doesn't have much influence, IMHO, it's just aligned like everything else.
I'm not sure Navalny is against the occupation on Crimea and Ukraine, there's nuance there, he has said he's against the Russian Military interventions, but he is still a Russian nationalist and has (to my knowledge) been against the conduct of the war and wants a diplomatic solution but it's not clear to me that he would have ever "given" Crimea back.
I have lots of respect to the guy, but realistically the only scenario where he would become Russian president would be if the vote for the Russian presidency was conducted in the West. He would win a landslide victory. In Russia though, if you go outside Moscow and St.Petersburg, it's not that people are against him — they simply never heard of him.
In the USSR in the 80s there was a lot of talk of one Angela Davis. She was presented as "the only opposition leader" or something. There's no doubt that if the election for POTUS was conducted in the USSR, she'd win over Reagan by a huge margin. In the USA though not many people knew who she was. So Navalny is the Angela Davis in reverse — the media across the border makes him look like punching in the weight category he does not really belong to.
Regarding Russian political landscape, you can look in any corner, from Gorbachev to Solzhenytsin and anything in between. There are not many points that these people could all agree on. But not a single Russian politician was comfortable with the thought of Ukraine joining NATO. And this includes Navalny too.
Most Americans do exactly the same. Look at the reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The vast majority of Americans couldn't identify either of those countries on a map let alone understand their history and culture yet it was "safe" to go along with it lest you be called unpatriotic.
This seems similar to how the people in Germany reacted after the Nazis lost WW2.
Thats pretty accurate though.
Let me try. We're you ever on an amateur IT conference? Comicon? Some sports event? Would it ever occur to you to assume some government is secretly behind it? When the Jehova witnesses or scientologists knock on your door - which government is financing them to do it and why? After all people don't do things for free.
A Doctors Without Borders medic is an agent of a foreign organization, therefore a foreign agent.
Therefore CIA and DWB are essentially the same thing. Bonus points if you can find one case where a DWB volunteer also had ties to the CIA, which would totally expose the two orgs as being exactly the same in all ways at all times.
For some reason people just can’t resist reductionism.
Funny was how they try to present them as modest, but cannot properly remove their Rolex out of a picture (or bother not wearing a Rolex).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17622820
Hard to imagine, how anyone can believe such people in a spiritual way.
Official state churches are part of the state.
> They are also openly supporting invasion of Ukraine as a kind of "holy war".
What about a holy war to bring democracy and freedom to ukraine. Would that make it better?
> The russian word for "non-government organization" is "foreign agent".
It's everyone's word for NGOs. Haven't we been attacking chinese 'ngos' as being 'foreign agents'? It isn't a secret that we've been using NGOs as intelligence fronts for a very long time. What do you think NGOs exist to do? Provide aid? Help foreign countries?
