Mick Hartley

Putin's derangement gets ever darker:

President Putin has compared himself to Jesus Christ as he quoted the Bible to explain his divine mission schooling Russia’s youth in “traditional” values.

The Russian president has frequently portrayed himself as a stalwart defender of the Christian faith against the “Satanic” West.

But in a revealing insight into how Putin sees his role, the Russian leader spoke in overtly religious terms about the need to shape the worldview of young Russians.

Appearing via video link to celebrate the opening of children’s centres near Moscow, Putin began quoting from the Bible….

Putin compared his mission of protecting the Russian youth from the creeping influence of the West to the efforts of Jesus Christ recruiting Peter and Andrew, two fishermen, to spread the word of God….

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has said that Russian troops who die in Ukraine are absolved of sin, effectively anointing the war as a holy crusade.

Last week Richard Dawkins, speaking on LBC, said: "If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not." Most people brought up as cosy Anglicans in the UK would very likely agree, whether church-goers or lapsed. But Christianity can take many forms, and in Russia it's clearly turned very nasty indeed – used to sanctify genocide in Ukraine. You'd be hard pressed now to choose between Islamist jihad and current Russian Orthodoxy on a moral scale.