The Pseudo Right support of Putin only results in the furthering of the causes of the Left.
The facts were quite clear. Among Putin's four military interventions in the former Soviet space, three targeted Christian and Orthodox countries. The direct aggression against Georgia was to the benefit of the Muslim Abkhazians. During the last conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the French far right and the Republicans (Les Républicains) called for Christian solidarity against the Turkish-Muslim threat. I had reminded them in an article (Le Monde, 18 November 2020) that the Russians were on Azerbaijan's side and not at all on the Armenians' side. They let the Azeris take over Karabakh and then pretended to intervene. In the wake of the war in Chechnya, Putin supported the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The only place in geographical Europe where Sharia law is applied is in the Republic of Chechnya, in Russia. The attack on another Orthodox nation, Ukraine, will further accentuate the divisions in the Orthodox world but also in the Christian world in general (the Ukrainian Catholic Uniates are a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism). The only Ukrainian patriarch who still recognises the supremacy of Patriarch Cyril of Moscow, Onuphre, has just called on the faithful to defend the Ukrainian homeland. Putin has lost his claim to represent the Orthodox world.
Great essay by Oliver Roy. Note, in quoting Roy I don't agree with all that he says. I'm a big believer in the Clash of Civilisations theory. The problem isn't with the theory but in what is considered a civilisation. Samuel Huntington painted with too broad a brush, failing to appreciate that local factors--which cause the formation of identity--modify this theory quite a bit.
