Russian world

[8] President Vladimir Putin established the government-funded Russkiy Mir Foundation to foster the idea of the "Russian world" abroad.

[15][16][17] In the 1990s, Russian neo-fascist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin began writing about Russia as a unique Eurasian civilization.

[14] Other authors behind the development of the concept in post-Soviet Russia include Pyotr Shchedrovitsky [ru], Yefim Ostrovsky, Valery Tishkov, Vitaly Skrinnik, Tatyana Poloskova and Natalya Narochnitskaya.

It says that Putin's regime has debased the "Russian world" concept with a mixture of obscurantism, Orthodox dogma, anti-Western sentiment, nationalism, conspiracy theory and security-state Stalinism.

[22] The visit was widely covered in Russian media, which presented Arkaim as the "homeland of the majority of contemporary people in Asia, and, partly, Europe".

[24] Putin decreed the establishment of the government-sponsored Russkiy Mir Foundation in 2007, to foster the idea of the "Russian world" abroad.

[33] They condemned six "pseudo theological facets" of the "Russian world" concept: replacing the Kingdom of God with an earthly kingdom; deification of the state through a theocracy and caesaropapism which deprives the Church of its freedom to stand against injustice; divinization of a culture; Manichaean demonization of the West; refusal to speak the truth and non-acknowledgement of "murderous intent and culpability".

[39][40] In their epistolary exchange of early 2023, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I and the Archbishop of Cyprus, George III, discussed the issue extensively.

The Economist also pointed to Patriarch Kirill's declaration of the godliness of the war and its role in keeping out the West's alleged decadent gay culture, and to the priest Elizbar Orlov who said that Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine is cleansing the world of "a diabolic infection".

[21] On 25 December 2022, in an interview for national television, Putin openly declared that Russia's goal is "to unite the Russian people" within a single state.

[49] Orlando Figes defines the invasion as "imperial expansionism" and writes that the Russians' sense of superiority may help to explain its brutality: "The Russian killings of civilians, their rapes of women, and other acts of terror are driven by a post-imperial urge to take revenge and punish them, to make them pay for their independence from Russia, for their determination to be part of Europe, to be Ukrainians, and not subjects of the 'Russian world'".