Putin wants people to believe that his war in Ukraine, and his broader confrontation with the West, is holy. Not merely strategic, but sacred. The West is decadent. Its values are collapsing. Washington and Brussels, he says, are dragging Ukraine into the abyss. For some people in the West, especially those who are disgusted with…
Russia is often analyzed through politics, economics, or war — but those are only the symptoms. To truly understand it, we need to look deeper — into something far more primitive and enduring: belief. An invisible network of symbols, omens, and rituals still guides how people think, act, and make decisions. Because in Russia, superstition…
You see Russian priests blessing shells and rockets before they fly into Ukraine—and you wonder. How can this be? What happened to “Thou shalt not kill”?And yet, Putin insists on it. He is openly religious. One of his demands is for the Russian Orthodox Church to be restored in Ukraine, as if faith itself must…
Today, I invite you into a world that seems almost unbelievable — a world where powerful men, armed with nuclear weapons and armies, still quietly seek the blessings of shamans and fortune-tellers before making decisions that could change the course of history. It sounds absurd, almost laughable—until you realize how deeply this belief system is…
The most powerful belief system in 20th-century Russia didn’t come from a church—it came from the Communist Party. The Soviet Union didn’t just control politics, it replaced religion. It had its own gospel, its own saints and martyrs, and its own sacred mission: to save humanity through revolution. Lenin was the messiah. Marx was the…
