The Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC), a Kremlin-controlled organization and a prominent tool in Russia's hybrid warfare toolkit, held the World Russian People's Assembly in Moscow on March 27-28 and approved an ideological and political document. It brings together several ideological themes of the Kremlin as an apparent intention to form a broader nationalist ideology around the war in Ukraine and Russia's expansionist future.
The head of the Patriarch Kirill, who is said to be a former officer of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), also known as a staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, chairs the congress and probably coordinates the document.
This is what the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes in its daily analysis.
"The Present and Future of the Russian World" addresses the Russian legislative and executive authorities with specific calls for amendments to Russian political documents and laws. These appeals are likely either attempts to socialize the Kremlin’s desired policies among Russians before they are implemented, or to test reactions to policies the Kremlin is currently considering.
The ROC published the document a week after the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall and roughly a month before the start of Orthodox Easter Holy Week. It is likely intended to capitalize on the heightened anxiety following the terrorist attack and the increased support for Russian Orthodoxy to gain support for its desired ultranationalist policies and ideological vision.
It has intensified the Kremlin’s rhetoric about Russia’s war in Ukraine and presented it as an existential and civilizational "holy war", a significant departure for Russian authorities, who have so far studiously avoided officially defining the Russian invasion of Ukraine as any kind of "war". The ROC deputy called the "special military operation" Putin's holy war and a new stage in the struggle of the Russian people for "national liberation in Southwestern Russia", meaning Eastern and Southeastern Ukraine.
The ROC stated that the Russian people are defending their lives, freedom and statehood; their civilizational, religious, national and cultural identity; and their right to live within the borders of a single Russian state by waging Putin's war of conquest in Ukraine. The ROC deputy argued that the war in Ukraine is a holy war because Russia is defending "Holy Russia" and the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism.
The ROC deputy stated that the war in Ukraine will end with Russia seizing exclusive influence over the entire territory of modern Ukraine and excluding any Ukrainian government that the Kremlin has defined as hostile to Russia. The description of Russian goals is consistent with repeated Kremlin statements indicating that Putin retains his goal of destroying Ukrainian sovereignty and statehood.
The term "holy war" can also evoke allusions to the Great Patriotic War (World War II), as the unofficial military anthem of the Soviet Union shared the same name. The Kremlin routinely invokes the myths of the Great Patriotic War to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine.
However, the Kremlin continues to emphasize that the war in Ukraine is a "special military operation" and an outright recognition of the conflict as a holy war could generate support from Russians who find the Kremlin's relatively restrained rhetoric uninspiring. The ROC did not define the holy war as a purely Orthodox concept, but instead tied it to the Kremlin's purposefully broad conception of who is part of the Russian nation and the Russian world.
However, the Ukrainian victory does not pose these existential threats, since Ukraine's struggle to restore its territorial integrity, return its people, and defend its national identity does not violate Russian identity, statehood, or territorial integrity.
The ROC strongly emphasized Russia's need for traditional family values and an updated migration policy to counter Russia's ongoing demographic crisis. It identified Russia's demographic crisis as the main existential threat to Russia and characterized stable demographic growth as a critical national security priority.
Russia needs to increase its population to 600 million people (an increase of approximately 450 million) over the next 100 years, and a series of measures are being outlined to enable Russia to achieve this ambitious task. The ROC deputy called for the revival of the "traditional large family" and traditional family values in Russia. In doing so, he reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's emphasis on 2024 as the "year of the family" in recent major national addresses.
The Russian government should recognize the family and its well-being as Russia's "main national development goal" and "strategic national priority" and should amend Russia's main strategic planning documents to reflect this.
Russian popular culture should create a "cult of the family" in society and proposed various economic benefits that the state should introduce to encourage larger families.
The new state migration policy is also key to an "effective" demographic policy. It complains that migrants who do not speak Russian, do not understand Russian history and culture, and cannot integrate into Russian society, are destroying Russia's unified legal, cultural, and linguistic space.
A series of policy recommendations are offered that Russia should prioritize in its new migration policy. Among them are "significant" restrictions on low-skilled foreign workers, employment guarantees and high incomes for Russian citizens, protection of the rights and interests of ethnic Russians and other indigenous peoples, the mass return of "compatriots" and highly qualified foreign specialists who are loyal to Russia and ready to integrate into Russian society.
Elected Russian officials and ultranationalist voices have recently called on Russia to introduce anti-migrant policies following the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall. But ISW continues to believe that it is unlikely that Russia will introduce restrictions that would reduce the number of migrants in Russia, given that Russia continues to rely heavily on migrants to compensate for domestic labor shortages and for force generation efforts.
Putin stated in December 2023 that "Russian compatriots abroad" are those who have historical, cultural, or linguistic ties to Russia, and the ROC deputy seems to suggest that repatriating such "compatriots" to Russia could be a major resource that Russia could use to address its demographic crisis. Some of the other policy recommendations, however, controversially seek to limit the very migrants who would fall under Putin's definition of "compatriots abroad". The Church's approach appears to be at odds with Putin's previous definition, which postulated a diverse and inclusive Russian civic nationalism.
The ROC argues that the creation of a stable and sovereign "Русский мир" under the Russian state will lead to economic opportunities and Russia's role as one of the leading centers of a multipolar world order.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky stressed that the shortage of material resources due to the delay in Western security assistance is constraining Ukrainian forces and forcing Ukraine to conduct strategic defense. Ukrainian publisher Ukrinform published an interview with Syrsky on March 29, in which he stated that strategic defense makes sense given Ukraine's material shortages and noted that Ukraine was unable to plan operations due to uncertainty over Western provisions for military aid.
Syrsky stated that the significant superiority of Russian forces in personnel, heavy Russian air strikes, and a shortage of Ukrainian artillery shells allowed Russian forces to break through Ukrainian defenses and capture Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, in mid-February 2024. Ukrainian forces could have successfully defended Avdiivka if they had sufficient artillery ammunition and air defenses in the area. Syrsky acknowledged that Russian forces have significantly increased airstrikes against Ukrainian forces in recent weeks and months, and that Russian forces have recently had a six-to-one advantage over Ukrainian artillery ammunition. Syrsky stated that Ukrainian forces were able to offset the artillery superiority of Russian forces through rear-end strikes, but only in certain areas of the theater.
Ukrainian forces have proven capable of significantly destroying Russian forces when well-supplied. Ukrainian forces conducted a blockade campaign using HIMARS to target bridges over the Dnieper River, forcing Russian forces to withdraw from the west (right) bank of the Kherson region in November 2022.
Ukrainian forces took advantage of a surprise breakthrough of Russian lines in the Kharkiv region in September 2022.
Ukrainian forces are currently waging an ongoing campaign that is limiting the ability of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) to operate freely and control the Black Sea.
Syrsky's interview, in particular his assertion that Ukrainian forces can defend their territory and defeat a Russian invasion given sufficient military assistance from the West, no matter how many troops Russia generates, highlights how the US's failure to provide timely and consistent military equipment and weapons to Ukraine has limited Ukraine's ability to conduct strategic planning or conduct major operations.
Syrsky's statements indicate that Ukraine is attempting to adapt to reduced assistance both on the battlefield and by mobilizing its defense industrial base, but these efforts are insufficient to fully compensate for the lack of material funds in the near future.
Syrsky also indicated that Ukraine is trying to mitigate the manpower shortage by reinforcing front-line units with available personnel from the rear areas. Syrsky said that Ukrainian forces have transferred thousands of personnel from non-combat units in the rear to combat units on the front line and have begun a force rotation to allow front-line forces to rest.
Syrsky said that Ukrainian forces expect to have enough personnel to conduct their strategic defense, and that this number is well below the 500,000 personnel that Ukrainian officials have proposed to be mobilized by December 2023.
The Russian military may have expanded the range of targets for Russia's strike campaign against Ukraine's critical infrastructure to include hydroelectric power plants. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces carried out a series of missile and drone strikes on targets in Ukraine on the night of March 28-29, including 60 Shahed-136/131 drones from Primorskoye-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai and Kursk Oblast; three Kinzhal missiles from a MiG-31 aircraft over Ryazan Oblast; nine Kh-59 cruise missiles from a Su-34 aircraft over Belgorod Oblast; four Iskander-K missiles from Kursk Oblast; and 21 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles from Tu-95MS strategic bombers that took off from Engels airbase in Saratov region.
Ukrainian air defense shot down 58 Shahed drones, five Kh-59 cruise missiles, all four Iskander-K missiles, and 17 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces deliberately attacked the Kaniv and Dniester hydroelectric power plants in Cherkasy and Chernivtsi regions during the strikes on March 28-29.
Ukrainian officials reported that these Russian strikes targeted unspecified critical infrastructure in Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and Russian milibloggers claimed that Russian forces hit the Kryvyi Rih thermal power plant and the Srednodniprovsk hydroelectric power plant in Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukrainian state electricity transmission operator Ukrenergo reported that Russian strikes on March 28-29 damaged thermal and hydroelectric power plants in central and western Ukraine, causing power outages in Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.
Russian strikes on March 22 significantly damaged Ukraine's Dnipro hydroelectric power plant in the city of Zaporizhia and the facility will likely be out of service for some time.
ISW previously wrote that Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities may be aimed at degrading Ukraine's defense industrial capacity and that Russian forces may be trying to exploit the shortage of Ukrainian air defense missiles in a renewed attempt to disrupt Ukraine's energy grid.
Russia’s emerging pattern of striking Ukrainian dams and hydroelectric plants is a significant departure and escalation from Russia’s strike campaign against Ukraine. Russian forces have not previously launched sustained missile strikes against Ukrainian dams and hydroelectric plants. The United States and European countries remain reluctant to provide Ukraine with materials that could prove operationally or strategically significant and support a significant Ukrainian offensive effort due to fears of Russian escalation or retaliation. Western decisions to limit Ukraine’s defense capabilities in an attempt to manage escalation, however, have failed to prevent Russia from escalating its war against Ukraine. Moreover, Ukraine is conducting a strategic defense, not an offensive that could seriously threaten Russian positions in occupied Ukraine or Russian territory. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Brown Jr., said on March 28 regarding the provision of long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine that "the risk of escalation is not as high as it may have been at the beginning of the war in Ukraine."
Russia has consistently demonstrated its willingness to escalate its aggression without provocation, and concerns about Russian retaliation and escalation in response to further provision of Western weapons and systems to Ukraine should not dictate decision-making by the US or other Western countries regarding this assistance.
On March 28, Russia vetoed an annual United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution to expand the monitoring panel that monitors compliance with UN sanctions on North Korea.
China also abstained from the vote. The UN Security Council unanimously approved the annual renewal of the mandate of the North Korea sanctions monitoring panel since its establishment in 2009.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented vaguely that the veto was in Russia's interest.
Russian Foreign Ministry (MFA) spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that UN sanctions against North Korea were "old models" and had led to "grave humanitarian consequences" in North Korea.
Zakharova said that "the collective West" is responsible for Russia's veto on the resolution and that the West is unwilling to accept Russia's proposed "compromises".
Voice of America (VoA) reported that Russia and China recently tried to push the UN Security Council to add sunset clauses to some of the sanctions against North Korea, in which the sanctions would expire after an indefinite period of time if the UN Security Council does not reach a consensus on their extension.
Russia has recently strengthened its relations with North Korea as part of efforts to procure North Korean ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition for use in Ukraine, and Russia may be helping North Korea evade international sanctions beyond the immediate violations related to arms transfers.
Russia's veto on the oversight panel is likely part of Russian efforts to prevent the disclosure of Russia's own schemes to evade sanctions with North Korea. Russia may also have suspected that the UN Security Council would not approve the proposals for a "sunset" clause and instead used these proposals to set information conditions to later blame the West for the expiration of the monitoring panel's mandate. The Kremlin news channel TASS reported on March 27 that the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, met with North Korean State Security Minister Ri Chang-dae in Pyongyang during a visit on March 25-27 and discussed deepening Russian-North Korean relations.
The Kremlin appears to have been able to pressure Telegram to censor extremist content after the Crocus City Hall attack on March 22, underscoring its ability to exert pressure to act in its interests. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on March 28 that Telegram had begun measures to prevent extremist posts calling for terrorist attacks on March 24, preventing tens of thousands of alleged attempts to send messages calling for terrorist attacks and blocking thousands of users who sent such messages.
Durov said that Telegram users in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will be able to limit who can send them private messages starting next week. He stressed that Telegram is not a place for calls for violence.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 28 that Russia had no plans to block Telegram, but explicitly called on Durov to pay more attention to how terrorists use the platform and that the Kremlin "expects more" from Durov.
The Kremlin's ability to pressure Durov is remarkable, considering that Telegram is no longer based in Russia. Durov reportedly left Russia in 2014 after refusing to cooperate with Russian censorship.