Russia's Putin, pictured next to an Orthodox icon, warns of Western interference

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By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin, whose photograph was shown on Tuesday between two giant photographs of an ancient Orthodox icon, warned the West ahead of elections in March 2024 that any foreign interference in Russia would be considered an act of aggression.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to the heightened tension between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, prompting Putin to turn to China.

Since the invasion, Putin has had the narrative of the war, presenting it as an existential war between Russia’s sacred civilization and an arrogant West that he says is in cultural, political, and economic decline.

Speaking to the World Russian People’s Council, led by the head of Russia’s Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, Putin’s picture was shown on a giant screen beside two copies of an ancient Orthodox icon. Such icons are stylised, often gilded, religious paintings considered sacred in Orthodox churches.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a staunch institutional supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Putin has embraced its conservatism in his vision of Russia’s national identity.

The Kremlin leader said the West is in the grip of a racist Russophobia that portrays Russians as a people of backward “slaves” and warned that the United States would need to dismember and plunder Russia’s vast resources.

Putin, 71, cautioned that Russians themselves should remember the lessons of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the civil war and the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, which he said had allowed the division of the Russian people.

“I would like to emphasize that we regard any external interference, any provocation aimed at provoking inter-ethnic or inter-religious conflicts as acts of aggression against our country,” Putin said.

“I would like to emphasize once again that any attempt to sow inter-ethnic and inter-religious discord, to divide our society is a betrayal, a crime against the whole of Russia. We will not allow Russia to be divided. “

The West portrays Putin as a dictator who led Russia into an imperial-style land that weakened Russia and forged a Ukrainian state, while uniting the West and entrusting NATO with a post-Cold War mission.

Putin claims that the West is now failing in Ukraine and that its goal of defeating Russia has also failed.

The Kremlin leader says Western attempts to isolate Russia with the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a primary economy are part of what he sees as long-standing Western racism opposed to Russians.

The West, which denies it wants to rip Russia apart, has said it wants to help Ukraine defeat Russian forces on the battlefields of Ukraine, eject Russian soldiers and punish Putin for the war.

Putin thanked Russian businessmen for escaping Western sanctions.

“It was by combining the efforts of the state and business that we thwarted the unprecedented economic aggression of the West: its sanctions blitzkrieg failed,” Putin said.

The presidential election campaign is due to start next month and Putin is expected to run, a step that would ensure at least another six years at the helm for the former KGB spy, who has been in power since 2012, and before that, from 2000 to 2008.

Patriarch Kirill would pray that Putin would continue his work for the “benefit” of Russia and its people.

(Reporting via Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Leslie Adler)

Russia’s Putin, pictured next to an Orthodox icon, warns of Western interference

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