2025/07/28 by Pål Kolstø · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies
paper · doi:10.1111/russ.70068
openalex publication_date 2025/07/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/27
Abstract While the vast majority of Russian Orthodox believers have not uttered any opinion publicly on Russia’s war in Ukraine, a phalanx of Orthodox “empire supporters” ( impertsy ) have vociferously supported the invasion, using metaphysical and eschatological language. They link the myth of Moscow as the Third Rome to another, less known idea that Russia is “the Restrainer” ( Katechon , Uderzhivaiushchii ) which St. Paul talked about in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians. In an obscure passage, Paul seemed to claim that Antichrist will not appear on earth as long as a force is keeping him at bay. In the thinking of Russian apocalypticists, the contemporary Russian state in its capacity as the Third Rome represents this force and is therefore fighting Antichrist on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is the combination of those two ideology tropes—Moscow as the Third Rome and Russia as the restrainer—which is providing apocalyptic justification for the war in Ukraine. In this article, I present the contributions of some of the more prominent Russian apocalypticists to the legitimation of the war in Ukraine. Even if they represent only a minority among Russian Orthodox believers and can be located at the margins of the church, they are extraordinarily positioned to put their stamp on the public understanding of how the Russian Orthodox Church relates to the carnage in Ukraine, simply because alternative voices are muzzled.