Russia’s Orthodox Church on Wednesday appointed a bishop who is reputed to be President Vladimir Putin’s spiritual adviser to head the diocese of annexed Crimea.
In Russia, the anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea has traditionally been marked with nationwide festivities including concerts, fireworks and speeches by top officials but not this year. While the Kremlin was reportedly planning to go ahead with the usual lavish celebrations this weekend, they pulled the plug at the last moment. Instead, President Vladimir Putin made a surprise appearance in the Crimean city of Sevastopol and his first visit to the Ukrainian territory that Moscow seized following its full-scale invasion of its neighbor. “The war has gone on for more than a year and has changed everything,” Oleg Ignatov, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group, told The Moscow Times. “The Kremlin understands this.” At the time, the largely bloodless annexation of Crimea in 2014 was trumpeted by the Kremlin as a major policy success and sent Putin’s popularity soaring.
Good and evil stand in eternal conflict; one must triumph and one must be extinguished. The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky fully understood that, and so must we.
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