The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow has transferred the jewels of its collection, the ancient Vladimir and Don icons of the Mother of God, to the Russian Orthodox Church. Religious commentator Aleksandr Soldatov believes that the ROC received these icons because of the military patriotic associations they evoke.

As Aleksandr Soldatov writes in an article in Novaya Gazeta, in Russian church tradition both icons are credited with a number of important military victories, while the Vladimir icon, in addition, symbolizes the transfer of the sacred center of Rus from Kyiv through Vladimir to Moscow.

The so called Vladimir Icon was brought to Kyiv from Constantinople around 1130 by the Greek Michael, appointed head of the Metropolis of All Rus. The icon was placed in a convent dedicated to the Mother of God in the Kyiv suburb of Vyshhorod, so in Ukrainian tradition it is called the Kyiv Vyshhorod Icon. After quarreling with his father, the Grand Prince of Kyiv Yurii Dolgorukii, his son Andrei Bogoliubskii took the icon to Zalesie, placing it first in his country residence and then in the Dormition Cathedral of Vladimir on the Kliazma, where it received its present name.

In 1395, by the will of the Moscow Grand Prince Vasilii I, the icon was moved to the new capital, Moscow. Later, the intercession of the Vladimir Icon was credited with the final liberation from the Mongol Tatar yoke in 1480 and with Ivan the Terrible’s victory over the Kazan Khanate.

The mythology of the Don Icon is also militarized. According to church tradition, the Don Cossacks presented it to Grand Prince Dmitrii Donskoi on the eve of the Battle of Kulikovo, which became the first major Russian victory over the Horde.

According to Soldatov, it is precisely Patriarch Kirill and other speakers of the Moscow Patriarchate who tirelessly remind of their special usefulness in wartime conditions, because, in their view, “only religion can provide some higher meanings to a tragedy of such scale.”

At the same time, the Russian museum and cultural community no longer has any capacity for resistance.

The author recalled the story of 2022 to 2023 involving the coercion of museum professionals to hand over Rublev’s Trinity to the ROC. Despite the church’s assurances that the icon would be placed in a special capsule maintaining an optimal temperature and humidity regime, these guarantees were immediately violated. The current condition of the Trinity in the display case of the iconostasis of the Trinity Cathedral of the Trinity Sergius Lavra is not reliably known. At the same time, widely circulated footage shows Putin venerating it.