"The Blessed Fire of War"

Putin celebrates Easter in trampovski

For the first time in more than three years of full -scale military operations in Ukraine, the head of the Russian Federation declared Easter truce. It should last only a day with a little; Ukraine in response calls for a 30-day ceasefire.

How does the Putin initiative correspond to Trump's promises tied to Easter? And why this year the voice of religious leaders, who regularly called for the "festive truce", starting in 2022, is almost not heard?

Along after the “Descent of the Blessed Fire ”, in the evening of the Great Saturday April 19, Vladimir Putin appeared “City and Peace”: he tells the head of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces to stop the head of the City Control Service on the line of combat contact from the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of April 19 until the end of the first day of Easter-April 20. “We proceed from the fact that the Ukrainian side will follow our example,” Putin emphasized, immediately making a reservation that all “provocations” should be reacted hard and immediately. Soon after the broadcast of this statement, Putin went to Easter service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where he lit his candle from that very fertile fire delivered by plane from Jerusalem. Before the start of the service, the press secretary of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Vladimir Legoyda managed to publish a brief comment in his telegram channel: “A very important decision of the President of Russia.”

Unlike Putin, the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky does not flaunt religious feelings and extremely rarely appears at public services. He reacted to the initiative of the main enemy busily: “If now Russia is suddenly ready to really join the format of complete and unconditional silence why it did not make in response to the previous calls of the United States. - approx. aut. >, Ukraine will act mirror - as it will be from the Russian side. Silence in response to silence, blows in defense of blows.

If complete silence is really reigned, Ukraine proposes to extend it and at the end of Easter days on April 20 in the future. This will show the true intentions of Russia, because 30 hours are enough for headlines, but not for real measures to strengthen trust.

Thirty days can give the world a chance. ” But Trump, who seems to be the main beneficiary of this fleeting “truce”, are needed just headlines, which in a day can be converted into new confessions in dislike for Ukraine.

According to Zelensky, in a number of sections of the front, Russians continue combat operations after April 18: Makhina, consisting of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and countless equipment, is not able to urgently slow down. The Ukrainian media distributed video frames of drone hit on a residential high -rise building in Kherson on the evening of April 19, where six apartments burned down. The blow began five minutes before the onset of Putin's “truce”. However, in a statement by the President of Ukraine and specifically the “Easter” part: according to him, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, who came to Ukraine to plant their special “spiritual values”, destroyed 67 Ukrainian clergy and monks after February 24, 2022 and cripple 640 prayer buildings. This gave Zelensky the foundation to name the force that the Armed Forces of Ukraine is opposed, "one of the largest threats to Christian churches." And it is also important to remind about this on the first day of Easter - the festival of victory by life over death, the divine world over the spirit of war and anger, which is the inciters of armed conflicts.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andrei Sibiga recalled that Ukraine unconditionally supported the US proposal on a 30-day complete ceasefire in Gidda on March 11. That is how Trump and his team saw the dream of an “Easter truce” at that time. Reduction of 30 days until 30 hours looks another mockery of Putin over the US president. Well, he is glad to be deceived by himself ...

Despite the fact that Trump stubbornly calls the Russian-Ukrainian conflict “Biden’s War” (and this is perhaps the only constant in his conflicting statements about what was happening in Ukraine), it was under the last US administration that attempts were made to cease fire on the greatest Christian holidays. So, on January 5, 2023 - clearly with the sanction of the Kremlin - Patriarch Kirill made an initiative, the formula of which almost coincides with the current Putinskaya: "To establish a Christmas truce from 12:00 January 6 to 24:00 on January 7, so that Orthodox people can visit the services in the Christmas uncleaning household on the Christmas Day." It seems that the Kremlin supported that initiative, but somehow uncertainly: the fighting in the Bakhmut direction was then activated precisely during the hours of the “truce”. True, the main guilt for them was shifted to the Wagner PMC, but then it was still “in trend”. On Christmas 2023, two civilians were killed in Bakhmut and 13 civilians were injured, and Wagner began the storm of Soledar, losing only on the first day of Christmas 180 mercenaries. Despite all this, then Peskov stated that "the goals of the ceasefire were achieved."

At the Christmas of this year, Putin “without looking” discarded the idea of ​​a truce (well, yes, the Biden administration was still nominally in the USA), and even earlier the Russian Orthodox Church promised no longer to speak with such initiatives. The speaker of the patriarchy, the deputy head of its synodal department of the relationship of the church with society and the media, Vakhtang Kipshidze explained this with such “purely gospel” arguments as “understanding < from the Ukrainian side. - approx. aut. > There are no signs of its appearance. ” Only Western Christian circles continued to be called to the ceasefire: the Pope, the World Council of Churches, the conference of European churches. Putin, on the other hand, discarded such ideas with references to his own euphoria: “Our army goes forward, the enemy cannot gain a foothold in the positions that he moved to this day ... Our guys are going again tomorrow, and so further, and further, and further.”

The ideas of a truce have always been met by radical rejection in turbo-patriotic Orthodox circles, such as the “Union of Orthodox Citizens” or the “Association of Orthodox Experts”. These fighters of the spiritual and virtual front have its own original optics, in which “Switch” is sacred (such as jihad), it goes on earth and in the invisible world, in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Jesus Christ and Archangel Michael, and in the ranks of the Armed Forces-only demons and all evil spirits. Since the personality of Vladimir Putin is deified in turbo-patriotic circles and is endowed with infallibility, his “reconciliation” initiative is a great “temptation” for them. Just the other day, Kirill Frolov, the head of the Association of Orthodox Experts and the head. The church department at the Zatulinsk Institute of the CIS countries announced :

“That the“ Easter truce ”fell off is already a great success. This problem is that the tactics of a protracted war with constant unofficial self -restraint of the Russian Federation will not win. ”

“Orthodox experts” saw only one way to solve the problem of good and evil: “To start a new stage with an attack on all fronts and crushing blows of“ hazel ”.” According to Frolov, “the Easter truce with Ukriykh is the betrayal of Christ and Satanism! Even for 24 hours! " So, Putin betrayed Christ and fell into Satanism? The “faithful children of Patriarch Kirill” play dangerous games.

But back to the Vatican-it was the holy throne and personally Papa Francis made maximum efforts to promote the Agenda of the truce, which the New European Europe more than once wrote . Even in the early Middle Ages, the provision of the Catholic Church included a provision on the obligatory armistice in some periods of the church year - and it was partially observed even during the First World War. In 2023–24, Pope Francis united Nobel laureates under his homophore, who not only supported the calls of the pope, but also engaged in a kind of brainstorming at conferences in Rome. Finally, on April 19, a few hours before the Putin’s statement, the vice-president of the USA Di Wence, a convert Catholic and one of the most creative members of the Trump team arrived in the Vatican. Despite the Great Saturday, he had negotiations with the Secretary of State of Saint of the throne, Cardinal Pietro Passlyin and the secretary of the Holy See on relations with states and international organizations by Archbishop Paul Richard Galllaher. As always, the Vatican press service is limited to stingy phrases about the search for ways to stop armed conflicts, but behind them there is a delicate and painstaking long-term work of Catholic diplomacy, which has already brought tangible fruits in the form of the return of stolen clergymen and some Ukrainian children to Ukraine.

So it is likely that the key to the unexpected “peaceful initiatives” of Putin should not be sought in the oval office, but in the labyrinths of the Apostolic Palace.