Kirsten Armbruster

The Ukraine War – a Crusade of Russian Orthodoxy?

Released April 8, 2022

The so-called Sun Temple on the island of Crimea, a rock circle landscape in the Ilyas Kaya; Photo: Elena Stadler on the website http://www.naturwissen.com based on Boris Bojtschenko free for private use

The Ukraine war, which is so preoccupying us these days, actually began in 2014 with the Russian occupation of Crimea. And, in order to better understand the current war, it is worth taking a closer look at Putin's view of the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.

From the IPKF, the interdisciplinary research on the criticism of patriarchy, we know that the close connection between politics and theology in connection with the means of war is the main pillar of patriarchy. Of theology, mind you, not of religion in the original sense of a maternal image of God that is anchored in the natural cycle of life and death, but of theologies that are always based on a male image of God and on a monopoly of dying on the use of military force, dictated by a ruler and completely detached from the circle of the living. But where is the theological aspect of today's war? Let's take a closer look at Crimea.

In terms of landscape mythology, the Crimea has preserved the former sanctity of the landscape, among other things in a rock circle, the sanctity of Mother Earth, Mrs. Moon and Mrs. Sun, the original religion of the cosmic divine mother, which we in Europe from the westernmost regions of Spain and France have freed themselves from the patriarchal transformations up to the eastern Siberian regions of Europe. (Armbruster, Kirsten: Criticism of Patriarchy, 2021 see God MOTHER figurines in the Paleolithic and in the Neolithic pp. 436-518). And just as we in Western Europe can clear away the Christian superimpositions of the original religion, especially on the widely ramified Jacobsweg, there with a Catholic character (see: Armbruster, Kirsten: Der Jacobsweg und der Muschelweg, 2013 and 2014), so we find these Christian ones Overlays also on the island of Crimea, here in the guise of the Russian-Orthodox orientation

In 2016, the Neue Züricher Zeitung wrote about Russia’s claim to Crimea under the headline: “Crimea is stylized as “holy ground””:

"In order to support Russia's claim to power in Crimea, loyalist 'historians' do not shy away from wild historical speculations. The aim is to rewrite the occidental chronology" (NZZ, Ingold, Felix, Philipp: 30.11.2016)

Reference is made, among other things, to a shrine in the Uspenski rock monastery on the Crimean peninsula, where the Virgin Mary is said to have lived in the 12th century.

rock caves of the Uspensky Monastery; CCBY-SA3.0; GNU Free License

In a keynote speech on the state of the nation, Putin justifies the annexation of Crimea by saying:

"that the peninsula in the Black Sea is as sacred to Russia as the Temple Mount is to those who profess Judaism or Islam". (NZZ, 2016, ibid.).

Russia's theological claim to Crimea is based on the research of mathematician Anatoly Formenko, who has gathered hundreds of computer scientists, historians, linguists, geologists and archaeologists in his own institute at Lomonosov University in Moscow. The Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"What you want to prove, using the latest methods and ancient myths, is nothing other than that a thousand years of world history were not simply falsified as part of the greatest fraud of all time, but simply invented. Jesus was actually born in Crimea in 1053, which is also where the Bible is set, before being moved to Judea and Galilee. It was in the Crimea that not only Christianity was invented, but the Occident itself, and world civilization was initiated by Russian culture. It is only in the light of this knowledge that one really understands why Russia wanted the Crimea, from which everything started, so badly". (Gauß, Karl-Markus: Jesus ate goulash at the last supper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 2, 2019).

Adds Ms. that in October 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church separated from the Orthodox Patriarch of Istanbul (Constantinople) because the latter had supported the establishment of a separate Orthodox Church of Ukarine, which is a de facto split in the Orthodox Church, It becomes clear that today's Ukraine war has an essential theological component, which gives the war, like all Crusades, a fanatical component that has so far been completely ignored in the political discussion, but which intensifies the danger of this war.

The geopolitical and geographical axis to Serbia, with the Putin-friendly Hungary as a buffer state, also comes into focus, because in Serbia we also find the orthodox form of the CChristianity. Should this too – after the Ukraine – be reintegrated into Russian orthodoxy, back home into the Great Russian Empire of today's Tsar Putin? And are we mentally prepared for the political assessment of the Ukraine war for its theological-fanatical component in the form of a large-scale orthodox crusade. I'm afraid not. But I think it makes sense to keep an eye on this theological aspect of power, because ideologically the most bitter and unscrupulous battles are fought in the name of a male god, because the reward then awaits in heaven, not on earth.