IN A documentary video shown on Russian state TV (Rossiya-1), marking 25 years of his leadership, President Putin has stated that Moscow is the “Third Rome”.
“In Rome, Christianity was reformed, but not in Byzantium. . . And we came to believe that we are the successors of true Christianity. Moscow is the Third Rome, and there will be no Fourth. So we are the true Christians,” Mr Putin said in the documentary Russia. The Kremlin. Putin. 25 Years, made by Saida Medvedeva and Pavel Zarubin.
In the 90-minute video, which chronicles President Putin’s achievements over his 25 years in power, he also spoke about the differences in civilisation between the West and Russia, saying that material prosperity was being prioritised in the “Catholic and Protestant culture”.
“They have spiritual values, too, of course, but success is still measured in material terms. In Russia, that’s not the case. In Russia, broadly speaking, we talk about moral foundations,” he said.
In 2024, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew spoke about the “Third Rome” as a geopolitical concept, stitching it together with the “Russian World” ideology being considered by him as the Russian “answer to the ‘corrupt West’” as well as “the main instrument for a ‘spiritual’ legitimisation of the invasion of Ukraine. . .
“According to its proponents, Moscow would become the ‘Third Rome’ after the ‘fallen Second’, Constantinople. However, there has never been a ‘First’ and a ‘Second Rome’, therefore, there can never exist a ‘Third Rome’”, Patriarch Bartholomew said. “There is only the Elder Rome and the New Rome-Constantinople.”
As Russia marks the 80th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany in the Second World War, Patriarch Kirill has reflected on the significant part that President Putin has played in shaping modern Russia, thanking him for building a relationship between the Church and the State that is “without precedent in our nation’s history”.
“Thanks to your unwavering will, courage, determination, sense of responsibility, and — above all — your infinite love for the Fatherland and devotion to duty, Russia has remained a unified, independent, and sovereign state,” Patriarch Kirill wrote, according to the news website Orthodox Times.
The military parade on Victory Day in Moscow is taking place under the shadow of war, as both Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of not upholding ceasefire agreements. President Putin announced a three-day ceasefire coinciding with the parade on Red Square, in Moscow, which President Zelensky dismissed as theatrics.
During a recent sermon, the Moscow priest Fr Andrei Tkachev accused those who held an anti-war position of being a manifestation of “cowardice and pusillanimity”, and of being taken over by “the spirit of the Antichrist,” the online project Christians Against War reported.
Fr Tkachev, considered to be one of Russia’s Orthodox “pro-war” voices, has a considerable online presence, with nearly two million followers on YouTube. He was appointed as rector of the Moscow Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Khokhly, after Patriarch Kirill removed the previous Archpriest Alexey Uminsky from that position, because he refused to read the prayer for the “victory of Holy Russia in Ukraine” during divine liturgy (News, 19 January 2024).