PATRIARCH Kirill of Moscow has once again condemned Western countries, while lauding President Putin for resisting their attempts to “impose values” on Russia.
“Accustomed to so many years of cultural hegemony, the Western world isn’t ready to recognise our right to originality and independence,” Kirill told the World Russian People’s Council (WRPC).
“Thank God Russia’s leadership and President are showing such responsibility, prudence, composure, and calm in these difficult circumstances — far from succumbing to cynical and impudent provocations, they are consistently advancing the goals of protecting the legitimate interests of Russia and the Russian world.”
Presenting his annual WRPC report in Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Moscow, the Patriarch said that “well-known external forces” sought to break up the “Russian world”, which represented “a cultural space of high spiritual and moral values” that surpassed state borders.
“It’s all about the values we adhere to, which form the basis of our spiritual and cultural identity — values now being heroically defended by our soldiers in the special military operation zone.
“The enemy of the human race is trying to sow confusion and anxiety in the hearts of people — to paralyse their will and courage, since a person deprived of spiritual peace is easier to manipulate.”
The Patriarch made the claims as Russian forces conducted cruise missile tests in the eastern Mediterranean after further strikes against Ukraine’s winter energy grid, and as NATO’s new Dutch secretary-general, Mark Rutte, appealed for fresh Western military aid.
Kirill said that the “Russian world” faced multiple challenges, from “neo-pagan” and socially liberal attitudes, to high abortion, divorce, and alcoholism rates, which were bringing “physical, intellectual, spiritual, and moral degradation”, and the threat of “inexorable extinction”.
Russia’s indigenous population, he said, was being “disproportionately replaced” by immigrants with “a different civilisational code”, and urged federal and regional measures to preserve peace and unity.
“Irresponsible statements by some fellow-citizens add fuel to the fire, not only questioning the generally accepted interpretation of key events in Russian history, but even challenging the state-forming role of the Russian people” the Patriarch said.
“Russia’s very existence as a great, sovereign, multinational state depends on overcoming these threats and problem. . . Then our country can truly become the light of the world and the salt of the earth, a force capable of courageously and firmly resisting the evil spirits of darkness, an ark of salvation for others.”
Founded in 1993, the WRPC is chaired by the Russian Patriarch and holds special consultative status at the United Nations.
In March, it announced that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a “holy war”, which marked a “new stage in the Russian people’s national liberation struggle” against the “criminal Kyiv regime” and “a West which has fallen into Satanism”, and must end with the “entire territory of modern Ukraine” locked in a “zone of exclusive Russian influence”.
In separate remarks, Kirill praised his country’s scientists for creating “incredible, fantastic weapons”, such as the new Oreshnik ballistic missile, which was used experimentally two weeks ago against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, and for “bewildering and terrifying those Western strategists who think of defeating Russia by military force”.
