Putin the Miracle Worker and the Cult of War

How the savage idea of ​​destroying Ukraine became the new state religion of Russia

Initiated as a lightning-fast and triumphant campaign, the war against Ukraine was envisioned by its ideologists as a quick and simple way to elevate Vladimir Putin in the eyes of Russians to a superhuman status, capable of changing the destinies of millions from his Kremlin office. Instead, it became the very essence of modern Russia's existence and its primary state religion.

The swift and easy conquest of Ukraine in the spring of 2022 was supposed to be the cornerstone of a new Russian cult—the cult of Putin the Victor, Putin the Miracle Worker. This Putin would have, in a matter of weeks, conquered all of Ukraine (perhaps excluding three western regions) and transformed tens of millions of Ukrainians into Russians with a mere decree granting them Russian citizenship. Moreover, the crushing of Ukraine was meant to be Putin's victory alone, his personal triumph, an almost magical act securing his status as the “gatherer of lands” and his right to lifelong rule. It is no coincidence that Russia spent the first forty days of the full-scale war against Ukraine without a nominal commander of what Russians still call the “special military operation.” The entire world was to know that the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and the annexation of foreign territories were solely his, Putin's, achievements.

Without a victory over Ukraine, the Putin cult was incomplete and lopsided. It had its saints - the bloody gangsters in the pay of the Russian government, who started the war in 2014. It had its canon—a pseudo-historical murk promoted at all levels, asserting that Ukraine never existed. It had its rituals, such as the obligatory pop concert on each anniversary of Crimea’s annexation. But it lacked the most crucial element—a miracle. Without a miracle, there is no religion; all these canons and rituals merely support the main core. No one would know about Buddha if he hadn’t been the first to find a way to end the endless cycle of painful rebirths. Jesus would be just one of thousands of forgotten Middle Eastern prophets if his followers didn’t believe he rose after dying on the cross. Religion is always about faith in a miracle. Putin’s religious miracle was supposed to be the liquidation of Ukraine. For years, Russian preacher-propagandists predicted the inevitability of this miracle and preemptively declared Putin the triumphant victor.

But everything went wrong. Ukraine was not crushed. The victorious canon and rituals looked downright ridiculous against the backdrop of retreat from Kharkiv and the flight from Kherson, making it impossible to craft a cult of the victor and miracle worker. Putin's triumph burned along with the ceremonial uniforms of the Russian National Guard troops, who had planned to march triumphantly down the main street of Kyiv but perished on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.

Then, the cult of Putin's victory was replaced by the cult of Putin's war. This cult is being formed right now. The process is not going terribly poorly, but it is quite slow. Factors include Putin's prolonged refusal to acknowledge his miscalculation and his months-long clinging to the hope of conquering Ukraine until the mobilization in the fall of 2022, as well as the lack of a "Plan B" in propaganda for the event of a blitzkrieg failure and the inevitable collapse of the myth of Putin the Miracle Worker.

Therefore, the once immutable "creed" of the Putin Miracle Worker cult, which began the war, is now being retrospectively cleaned up and rewritten: mentions of "denazification" and "demilitarization" are becoming rarer in Moscow. They no longer speak of "saving the brotherly people from the fascist regime” and increasingly call for the genocide of Ukrainians.

The war against Ukraine has literally become religious. The entire meaning of this slaughter has been reduced to attempts by Russians to force Ukrainians to recognize themselves as Russians, to renounce their national identity, their culture, and language as heresy. Now propaganda presents the war as a purifying crusade, depicting the occupiers as defenders of truth and Ukrainians as schismatics who have fallen away from this truth and must either acknowledge their Russianness or be destroyed.

Initially, calls for the total genocide of Ukrainians were exotic, allowed only to the chosen few. But for now discussing methods of killing peaceful Ukrainians became mainstream on Russian television.  What is the guilt of those whose deaths are so eagerly desired by the Russian talking heads? It lies in the fact that, for them, Ukrainians are "not ours," apostates persisting in their disbelief. However, the artificiality and incompleteness of the new cult of war cannot be hidden behind bloodthirsty slogans and loud promises to kill everyone they can. This cult paints a very clear image of the enemy: the Ukrainian who refuses to become Russian at any cost. But it gives a very vague answer to the question: how exactly are “foreign” Ukrainians supposed to be turned into “our own” Russians? The occupiers do not offer any criteria for Russianness, and therefore, no methods to become Russian. There is no shahada, the pronouncement of which automatically turns a non-Russian into a Russian. There is no sacrament of baptism into Russianness or a Russian equivalent of the giyur.

At the beginning of the war, this did not seem like a big problem to those who planned and ignited it. They believed that it was enough to distribute Russian passports to people in the occupied territories, and these people would automatically become their own. But it does not work that way. Every Ukrainian from the occupied territories is now seen in Russia as a saboteur and spy for Ukrainian intelligence services. Simply because, when starting the war, no one even thought about what to do with people who would not agree with the occupation. What to do with those who, under the pressure of circumstances, take a Russian passport but do not renounce their Ukrainian identity?

The Russian authorities, their court propagandists, and the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long since become an extension of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, have reached an ideological dead end. Russia is unable to capture all of Ukraine, unable to destroy all Ukrainians, and does not understand how to turn those who have come over to its side into its own. Yet the cult of war—however lopsided and illogical it may be—has been inflated so much that the war itself has become the main meaning of Russia's existence.

Putin is no longer a triumphant leader or a miracle worker, even on the broadcasts of the most shameless propagandists. He is, of course, still praised and adored, but more out of inertia than for any real, albeit exaggerated, victories. His main geopolitical achievement—the occupation of Crimea—is already showing cracks under the blows of Ukrainian drones and missiles. Instead of their flag in the center of Kyiv, Russians received evacuation buses from Belgorod and a Black Sea cluttered with the rusting remains of a combat fleet. The eradication of the "heresy of Ukrainian identity" is an even emptier and more senseless endeavor than the attempt to take Kyiv in three days. Through the war, Putin wanted to acquire a new status for himself, to become a living deity like a Roman emperor. But now, it is not he but the war that is becoming the main Russian deity. This war is overshadowing and eclipsing him. The almost formed cult of Putin the Victor is a thing of the past. It has been replaced by a raw and unclear, but very brutal, cult of war. It is this war, and not Putin, to which Russia will be subordinated.