On the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, which since 1953 has been observed as the World Day of Orthodox Youth, pupils of the Patriotic Education Center “Dinamite” at the Obukhovo House of Culture performed at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the settlement of Obukhovo near Moscow. The rector is Archpriest Sergiy Reshetnyak.

The club is named after Private Timofey Egorov, who was killed in the special military operation in 2023. “Dinamite” was his call sign. The center was founded and is headed by his father, Zakhar Ionovich Egorov, a member of the Obukhovo primary organization of the All-Russian Public Organization of War Veterans “Combat Brotherhood”. This is how the ROC works with parishioners.

Our publication has written about the profound merger of the ROC with Russia’s military machine. The Church, enjoying unprecedented access to society, from early schooling to the church pulpit for adults, is militarizing and turning the population of all Russia into a compliant army.

Another measure intended to assist the mobilization of Russian citizens is the appointment of patron saints for military or security structures. In the religious sphere, canonization is a complex process of examining a person’s life and posthumous miracles. Only then is a person numbered among the saints. For the ROC, however, this has become routine and another instrument of militarizing the population.

For example, it is known that the ROC Commission on the Canonization of Saints has begun preparations for the glorification among the saints and righteous warriors of Generalissimo Aleksandr Suvorov, although his name is associated with mass killings of Nogais, Crimean Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and other peoples.

Moreover, specialized journalists at Novaya Gazeta write that whereas previously decisions on canonization were taken by church consensus, they are now made single-handedly by Patriarch Kirill.

By an ordinary protocol decree, the Patriarch “determines Saint NN to be the patron of the NN troops”. For example:

• “in connection with the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War”, Kirill appointed Saint Andrey Bogolyubskiy of the twelfth century as patron of the chemical, biological, and radiological defense troops;
• Saint Aleksandr Nevskiy was appointed patron of the naval infantry;
• Venerable Iosif Volotskiy of Volokolamsk was appointed patron of the logistical support troops;
• Martyr Feodor Stratilat was appointed patron of the Federal Bailiff Service;
• the Optina Elders were appointed patrons of the GRU special forces;
• Holy Great Martyr Varvara was appointed patron of the Strategic Missile Forces;
• Holy Prophet Iliya was appointed patron of the Airborne Forces.

Even before his patriarchate, Kirill supported the canonization of Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, although he had not previously enjoyed broad church veneration among the saints. After canonization, his remains were exhumed, divided into parts, and sent to units of the Navy of the Russian Federation, where Ushakov came to be venerated as a heavenly patron.

Russia’s inability to rethink its own identity and the centuries-long instrumentalization of religion entrench the dependence of religious institutions on the state, turning them into an element of ideological infrastructure.