Putin is clearly looking to legacy and has planned for a conflict for at least 7 years. We don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this. What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church. Recently the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branchbecause they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.

Source: New Zealand Herald April 24, 2022 23:16 UTC