One of the mistakes made by the Russian authorities, who expected to gain the support of the local population after invading Ukraine, stems from their failure to understand Ukrainian identity and the fact that identity cannot be imposed as an ideological construct. What identity is and how Ukrainian identity differs from Russian identity is explained by Nikolai Karpitsky in the latest article from the “Dictionary of War” series on PostPravda.Info.
Identity
Identity is a sense of unity or sameness with something – an element of self-awareness as a person, based on one’s understanding of oneself and one’s relation to others. Different levels of identity coexist within self-consciousness:
– Personal identity – an answer to the question “Who am I?”; an awareness of oneself and one’s place in the world, formed through life experience and inner self-determination as an individual.
– Social identity – an awareness of belonging or connection to a community, culture, or tradition; it can be cultural, religious, professional, ideological, ethnic, national, civic, etc.
With the rise of nationalism in the 20th century, ideological appeals to ethnic and national identity were used to justify political claims that led to World War II and many other armed conflicts, including the Russo-Ukrainian war that began in 2014.
Civic and Archaic Social Identity
An archaic form of social identity is identifying oneself with a community of relatives, friends, or fellow villagers – that is, with the circle of people one can personally interact with. Based on this, different types of local identities are formed, connected to real communities – one’s village, one’s local community. These communities are “real” in the sense that people within them can directly interact with each other, unlike “imagined communities” (in the terminology of Benedict Anderson), in which people only mentally perceive themselves as part of one group but never actually meet each other. Such communities exist only in people’s consciousness, and to recognize identity with them, people need some marker of commonality – a shared religion, language, culture, nation, citizenship, social class, territory, customs, ethics, and so on.
In earlier times, belonging to a social class or religion was more important than ethnic affiliation, so nations and territories played a minor role in social identity. The formation of civic identity began when a sense of responsibility for one’s city or country became more important than loyalty to one’s class, lord, or king. The feeling of responsibility for one’s country as a whole led to the emergence of new civic nations. However, the process of their formation differs from country to country – in some, they are already established, while in others, they are only beginning to emerge.
The Soviet People – An Ideological Construct
Among the largely uneducated population of Tsarist Russia, local identity predominated. For most people, it was only important that those around them spoke a familiar language, followed familiar customs, and practiced the same religion. Identification with Russia as a whole was understood in an imperial context – as identification with the territory controlled by the Tsar’s authority.
For the Communists, the foundation of the state was territory and power, and it was no longer important which nations inhabited those territories. This defined the project of creating a new community – the Soviet people – united only by territory and state power. The collapse of the Soviet Union showed that identification with the Soviet people was based on ideology rather than genuine identity, and that the Soviet people were merely an ideological construct.
The Difference Between Identity and Ideology
Social self-identification can take either an ideological or a personal form – and only in the latter case does it become the foundation of true identity. Unlike ideology, identity always has a personal character. Ideology creates a system of ideas that motivate people to act in the interests of power or a group seeking power. An ideological framework requires a person to accept these ideas as their own, regardless of personal life experience or self-determination. A person who refuses to accept or critically reinterprets these ideas is perceived as a hostile element toward that ideology.
In contrast, identity is formed on the basis of one’s own life experience, with ideas serving as a means of understanding that experience. Therefore, there is no requirement to accept a fixed set of ideas as mandatory. On the contrary, one can constantly reinterpret them to gain a deeper understanding of oneself. For this reason, national or religious identity fosters personal development and creative self-realization, while national or religious ideology, on the contrary, suppresses individuality.
Since ideological self-identification is externally imposed and coercive, people usually abandon it easily when the political situation changes, and such rejection has no fundamental impact on their personality. A historical example of this is the abandonment of identification with the Soviet people. However, one cannot abandon one's own identity without a complete transformation of the self.
The Ideological Understanding of National Identity
The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of the formation of new civic nations in Russia and Ukraine. However, the establishment of a dictatorship in Russia interrupted this process. The current regime in Russia imposes on its citizens a contradictory identification with their country, which combines two distinct ideological orientations.
First, it presents Russia not as a state with historically defined borders, but as any territory that is or has ever been governed by central Russian authority. Second, it promotes an aggressive nationalist myth of a “triune people” sharing a single root – implying that Ukrainians and Belarusians have no right to exist independently of Russia. The first ideological stance is internationalist, while the second is nationalist and chauvinistic. This duality allows Russian propaganda to attract people with opposing ideological beliefs.
In line with the nationalist orientation, the Russian leadership seeks to impose a Russian identity on Ukrainians – declared as one of the goals of the military invasion of Ukraine, under the slogan of “denazification.” Some residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine declare support for Russia from the opposite ideological position: they identify not with Russians as a people, but with the territory controlled by Moscow. However, this ideological identification has failed to create a genuine Russian identity among them – neither during the Soviet period nor now.
The Russian propaganda system projects its own ideological understanding of national identity onto Ukrainian public consciousness. According to this view, Ukrainian identity is an ideological construct imposed by the West to set Ukraine against Russia. In reality, Ukraine is united by a shared cultural and historical experience – including a negative colonial past – which precludes any acceptance of a Russian identity.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion, the process of identity formation based on a new Ukrainian civic nation accelerated. However, it remains uneven, and in many regions – particularly in eastern Ukraine – an archaic local identity persists alongside Ukrainian identity, rooted in attachment to one’s city or village rather than to the country as a whole. This circumstance has also been used to sustain the false myth that residents of eastern Ukraine predominantly possess a Russian identity.
Arden Arkman. “This isn’t the Middle Ages, and we aren’t serfs”: Locals in Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas react to Putin’s territorial demands. The Insider. 12.11.2025. https://theins.press/en/confession/286742
(The content of the conversation with Nikolai Karpitsky was recorded for the article by Arden Arkman)
I’m from Tomsk, Siberia, where I graduated from the university’s philosophy department, taught there, and defended the rights of believers persecuted by the state. I often traveled to Ukraine, studying local religious communities. In 2014, I condemned Russia’s military actions — I said so openly in Tomsk media.
Because of that stance and my trips to Ukraine, the university refused to renew my contract, and there was no reason to stay in Russia. So in 2015, I moved to Kharkiv, where the local Krishna community helped me find a teaching job at Luhansk National University, which had relocated because of the war.
I traveled along the front line in Donbas, writing about how Christians lived amid the fighting. In Avdiivka, I helped deliver food to pensioners by bicycle with other volunteers. Among both us and the locals were people with pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian views, but there was no conflict.
Only once did my Russian citizenship cause problems. In 2015, I was stopped at a checkpoint outside Avdiivka — at the time the military had orders to detain anyone with a Russian passport. An anti-terrorist unit took me away for questioning about my views, which, as a teacher, I even found interesting. They eventually said, ‘Don’t tease the soldiers anymore,’ and let me go. After that, I passed that checkpoint freely.
Sloviansk emptied out in 2014, as everyone who could do so fled the war-torn Ukrainian cities. People feared both shelling and reprisals. The husband of a friend of mine, a deacon, was taken by pro-Russian fighters under the command of Igor Girkin. He was tortured and executed. Residents began returning in 2015, but out of 110,000 people, about half remain today.
I moved to Sloviansk in 2020, bought a small house with help from a local Christian community, and received permanent residency in Ukraine. Until the full-scale invasion, life was quiet, maybe [there was] one explosion a week somewhere. Until drones appeared, even eight kilometers from the front line it felt peaceful, like the rear. Since 2022, the front has drawn much closer — both in reality and in feeling.
Now, when the explosions hit, no one goes to the shelters — it’s pointless. Air raid alerts happen five times a day, but the strikes rarely coincide [with it] because it’s impossible to track them all. Yesterday drones were flying over; today I read that one local was killed. Living through this is terrifying, but you get used to it with time.
A few months ago, there was an explosion 500 or 800 meters from me, the house was completely destroyed. I was walking to the market, and people around me barely reacted. They kept walking the streets, working, and buying food. There’s a big difference between systematic and sporadic shelling.
Now Kostiantynivka is being struck systematically: there’s no power, water or gas, drones and missiles are destroying homes one by one. When utilities and repair crews can’t even work — that’s systematic destruction. In Sloviansk, they fix things quickly after strikes, and people have accepted that any of them could be next. It’s a kind of Russian roulette. I’ve decided to stay until the very last moment, but if things get really bad, I’ll go to Kramatorsk.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, prices have risen two to four times depending on the product. The variety of goods has decreased, but there will never be hunger here because Ukraine is a breadbasket. Even if a major war breaks out across the entire country, people will live on porridge, but they will live.
My citizenship or nationality has never mattered here, even after the start of the full-scale war. No one looks at your passport; they look at your beliefs. Everyone knows that Ukrainians curse Russians, but among themselves, they argue even more fiercely.
Because of the war, a sharp political culture has taken shape: any question is seen as a matter of life and death. Even in religious communities — among Hare Krishnas and Christians — there are debates over whether to take a pacifist or radically patriotic stance, whether to support the front or withdraw and focus on spiritual matters, whether to speak out actively or maintain neutrality. But everyone is united in a pro-Ukrainian position. No one holds a pro-Russian one. Even the traditional pacifism of the Hare Krishnas here is pro-Ukrainian: everyone wants Ukraine to win and criticizes Russian Krishnas for their different, pro-Russian “pacifism.”
It is natural that most of the blame is placed on Russians — they are the ones bombing us. But sometimes frustration is also projected onto the local authorities: why they didn’t prepare better, why there aren’t enough shelters, whether there is corruption, and so on. Russia is seen as the aggressor, and everyone understands that the Russians want to kill them. Therefore, no peace agreements are possible, nor is life under occupation.
Even communication with antiwar Russians isn’t working out for Ukrainians right now. I myself take part in some discussions, but only as an equal participant — like any other Ukrainian — and in both Ukrainian and Russian without any problem. And I can hear that no one here believes in dialogue or cooperation with Russians.
In 2022, Ukrainians naively thought it was possible to explain to Russians what was happening here, that they would understand and show support. But it soon became clear that no one could be convinced. And that was it, “dead means dead.” Even I have lost communication with like-minded people in Russia.
Some Russians say, “I support Ukraine. Ukrainians are our allies. We’ll stand together and try to convince other Russians not to go to the front. Let’s find common ground...” And Ukrainians reply: “That’s your problem. We live under bombs here, defending our country, and you want us to take part in your activities? The internal fight against Putin is your responsibility. We are fighting for survival.”
It also depends on the person. If someone speaks on behalf of Russians and takes responsibility for everything Russia is doing — or speaks only for themselves — they’ll be listened to. But when someone speaks on behalf of hypothetical “Russians who are against Putin,” that’s an immediate goodbye.
The idea of transferring our lands through any kind of agreement is completely unrealistic, even unimaginable. I myself will not live under occupation, and no one else will want to either. This isn’t the Middle Ages, when people could be handed over from one state to another like serfs.
First of all, there is a misconception in both Ukraine and Russia that the east is entirely pro-Russian and the west entirely pro-Ukrainian. That’s not true. It’s true that many in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions used to vote for pro-Russian parties. But there is no genuine Russian identity here, only Ukrainian or post-Soviet.
People here considered themselves locals because the idea of Ukraine had not yet fully formed — but it is taking shape now. Those who voted for the Party of Regions did not want to join Russia or see themselves as Russians; they wanted compromise, peace, and open borders, like in their Soviet past.
And in Donbas, more than half of the population felt that way. Pro-Russian politicians exploited these dreams and misrepresented them as genuine pro-Russian sentiment. It’s important to understand that Ukraine has no centralized propaganda like Russia does, so there’s complete anarchy in terms of information, and politics are hard to navigate. Every blogger, every party, every leader is their own propagandist. People were used to voting for local politicians without thinking about their “pro-Russian” stance.
In general, Russian propaganda is full of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. It even affects some young people who never lived in Soviet times but idealize it because they’ve been shown a picture of it as a paradise. Still, even they don’t want to be part of modern Russia.
Some people are politically illiterate. In Avdiivka, volunteers once brought food to an elderly woman whose apartment had been hit directly by a Grad rocket. The flat was burned out, but [Orthodox] icons still stood there — and among them, a portrait of [Viktor] Yanukovych. The woman said that under him, things were calm and life was good. Another man was hiding from mobilization, convinced that when the Russians arrived, they would give him an apartment in Donetsk and a job. In another building, an elderly man said he “didn’t know who was shooting at us.”
These people are not organized and cannot act as a political force demanding independence. But more and more people in Sloviansk now see themselves as Ukrainians, especially the young — and they know Ukrainian perfectly, unlike the older generation. Even the elderly now realize they live in Ukraine and that this is not just their local territory, but part of the Ukrainian state.
In 2015, half of the residents said, “We don’t care who’s in power, we’ll live under anyone.” But now no one here would agree to give up any territory under any circumstances. If you asked, “Would you agree to join Russia if these regions were transferred to it?” — the overwhelming majority would say, “Absolutely not,” even in exchange for peace.
When the referendum was held in Donbas, many people did come out to vote. It was a psychological reaction. People felt utterly helpless: they saw what was happening, couldn’t control it, and feared for the future. The referendum created the illusion that by voting, they could somehow influence events. It was a coping mechanism.
I believe that in the future, both sides’ use of artificial intelligence will affect the course of hostilities. The front will freeze, and we will lose the concept of the rear: the entire territory of both Russia and Ukraine will become a war zone. Because of drones, there will be no safe places anywhere, unfortunately. But without the drone revolution, the situation here would be much worse. The war had turned into one of attrition and was leading to Ukraine’s defeat. Now the odds have evened out. Technology is developing symmetrically: what we see in Sloviansk and in Kyiv will soon be happening across all of Russia. No one, in either Ukraine or Russia, will feel safe.
The aggressive political myth used to justify war – not only against Ukraine but against the entire Western civilization – penetrates much deeper into the public consciousness than Kremlin propaganda, disinformation, or fake news. In the latest article for The Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info, Nikolai Karpitsky explains why such a myth must be distinguished from ordinary historical myths inherent to any cultural consciousness.
Myth
A myth is an irrational way of understanding reality that, unlike rational knowledge, does not raise questions or invite critical reflection – instead, it eliminates them. A myth unites different events and phenomena into a coherent worldview, giving them new meaning even when no real connection exists between them. Myth complements rational understanding and allows people to perceive life as a whole. However, it can transform into an aggressive form when it comes into conflict with reality and forces people to deny obvious facts.
Example. If the lives of two people in love acquire new meaning through the myth of eternal love or destiny, that myth reveals the true essence of happiness – while critical thinking would only disrupt it. The happiness of the lovers becomes the criterion of the myth’s truth.
But if a person, blinded by love, begins to pursue another violently, their mythological perception of love collides with reality.
The most common form of aggressive social myth is the “conspiracy theory”: a conspiracy of doctors who allegedly invented the coronavirus, or of a secret world government that supposedly started the war between Russia and Ukraine, and so on. Such myths can be used by various political forces to justify power grabs, dictatorship, repression, and military aggression.
Because public consciousness often follows mythological logic, pseudoscientific and pseudo-historical myths circulate within it – this is natural and not necessarily negative. For example, the belief that one’s native language and culture are the oldest in the world. However, when subjected to ideological manipulation, such myths can take on an aggressive political form.
The Difference Between an Aggressive Political Myth and Fake News or Disinformation
A fake is a forgery meant to deceive – for example, a falsified news story, image, or source of information.
When fakes are spread deliberately, they become disinformation. Generally, disinformation can be exposed through data and source analysis or, at the very least, shown to be unsubstantiated. A political myth, by contrast, not only feeds on propaganda fakes – it can also generate them on its own, even without the direct participation of propaganda.
Unlike fake news or disinformation, an aggressive political myth does more than simply mislead people about facts or events – it constructs an alternative worldview that makes mutual understanding with those who perceive reality adequately impossible. A worldview determines the meaning and likelihood of events: phenomena that seem improbable or impossible from a realistic perspective become natural and inevitable within the alternative worldview – and vice versa.
An aggressive political myth cannot be treated as just another mistaken hypothesis, because even erroneous hypotheses can be tested rationally for their correspondence to reality. In contrast, such a myth is tested only against its own internal worldview through arbitrary interpretations and generalizations.
Therefore, no rational argument or reference to facts can persuade a person who believes in such a myth.
Example. In the autumn of 1999, an imperial myth prevailed in Russia – the belief that foreign forces sought to destroy the country, and that a new leader must restore it. When a series of apartment bombings occurred in Russia, serving as the pretext for the Second Chechen War, Moscow’s FSB was caught red-handed while preparing another bombing in Ryazan. Despite this, Russians voted for Putin in the next election. The myth proved stronger than the facts.
Aggressive Political Myths of the Kremlin
Historical consciousness in Russia has been shaped by unscientific historical myths – such as the myth of the “triune people” of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, allegedly descended from a single root. In reality, the territory of Kyivan Rus’ was inhabited by many different Slavic and non-Slavic tribes, and it is inaccurate to draw a direct line from them to modern nations. It doesn’t have any relevance to contemporary Russia and Ukraine, does it? Nevertheless, the Russian government has turned this myth into an ideology that justifies war and the destruction of Ukrainian identity.
The worldview of supporters of the current Russian regime includes several aggressive political myths that have fostered the spread of the ideology and practice of Russian fascism – “rashism.” Russians who accept this worldview are convinced that the West and Ukraine are hostile toward them, and that Russia is forced to wage war against them. Such people are almost impossible to persuade with facts or rational arguments.
Among these myths are the following:
– Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are one people; therefore, Ukraine has no right to independence.
– Ukrainian identity does not exist, and Ukraine is an Austro-Hungarian project created to destroy Russia.
– In 2014, the United States organized a coup in Ukraine and, against the will of the people, brought to power the “Kyiv junta,” which supposedly established a Nazi dictatorship and carries out repressions against Russians.
– The residents of eastern Ukraine have a Russian identity; therefore, they have always wanted to become part of Russia.
– The “Kyiv junta” bombed the Donbas for eight years, while Ukrainians dreamed that Russia would liberate them from the “Nazi regime.”
All these myths have nothing to do with reality. However, based on them, the Kremlin made the decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, expecting it to be supported by the local population.
War is a Reality That Cannot Be Ignored
Historical myths are an integral part of a nation’s cultural consciousness, and cultural creativity based on myth affirms its inner truth. Myth and science are alternative ways of understanding reality, so it is meaningless to disprove myth from the standpoint of science or science from the standpoint of myth. A myth can be called false only when it comes into conflict with reality. An additional sign of the falsity of such myths is their ability to generate new fakes – for example, fabricated stories about “Nazi atrocities” that arise in the public mind independently of official propaganda.
In peacetime, people often replace reality with myths, allowing themselves to overlook contradictions. But war is a reality that cannot be ignored. Putin believed that Ukrainians would support the Russian invasion – but his myth collided with reality. Many Russians believe in the myth of “Nazis persecuting Russians in Ukraine,” and because of this they lose connection with their own relatives and friends, perceiving them not as living people but as images from propaganda. Thus, they enter into conflict with the reality of their loved ones. This gives reason to claim that not all, but specifically Russian political myths are false.
Whereas Soviet ideology was monolithic, the current ideology of the Russian authorities appears diffuse, combining seemingly incompatible elements — for example, the glorification of the Soviet past alongside the idealisation of tsarist Russia. At the same time, Russian propaganda has achieved notable success, managing to draw in a wide range of political forces — including some that are openly hostile to one another. This indicates that contemporary Russian ideology operates differently from its Soviet predecessor. To understand this difference, we need to turn to the very concept of “ideology” itself, a topic to which Nikolai Karpitsky devoted another entry in the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info.
Ideology
Ideology is a system of ideas that motivates people to act in the interests of those in power, or of a group aspiring to power. This applies not only to state power, but also to power within various segments of society – religious movements, patriarchal communities, professional associations, mafia organizations, and so on.
Values and Ιdeology
Values are the deeper meanings that confer significance on life — on actions, goals, events, and phenomena. They form an inner motivation, independent of external circumstances, that prompts a person to think and act freely. Through value-based self-determination, a person becomes aware of their freedom and expresses it through cultural creativity.
Ideology is grounded in ideological frameworks - shared meanings that establish how socio-political phenomena should be evaluated, and what is expected of a person’s stance and participation within society. Ideology assumes that its principles must be accepted unconditionally, without critical reflection. Therefore, when confronted with ideological propaganda, a person is faced with a choice: either accept it, or be counted among its enemies.
If an ideological directive is an external factor that does not require free self-determination, then values, by contrast, emerge from within that very process of self-determination. Thus, a person can critically re-evaluate their values, arriving at a deeper understanding of them. Ideology can appeal to values only by transforming them. To achieve this, a particular interpretation of values is presented to society as a norm that demands unconditional agreement. An example of such ideological transformation is the modern Russian discourse on “traditional values”, which functions not as a system of values at all, but as a set of ideological directives.
Ideology and Public Morality
Public morality relies on moral norms and may be grounded either in ethics or in ideology. Ethics is grounded in ethical values, which require a person to exercise free self-determination in relation to them. Therefore, an ethical stance is a personal stance, one in which an individual is conscious of their own responsibility. A moral norm expresses the shared understanding of ethical values. Public morality may differ between communities, depending on how their moral norms articulate and preserve a shared understanding of ethical values.
If moral norms are imposed not as an expression of shared ethical values but as formal requirements, they must then be justified ideologically. This becomes particularly evident when moral requirements that operate within a specific community are imposed on society as a whole, presented as unconditional norms that allow no room for discussion. In such cases, public morality loses its connection to ethical values and turns into a tool of ideology.
Religion and Ιdeology
If religion is embraced without freedom, it loses its genuine meaning. The preaching of doctrine and moral principles is directed toward free individuals; its purpose is to persuade, not to impose. However, when the followers of a particular religion present their moral position as a mandatory norm for the entire society, including those who do not share their faith, they thereby turn religion into ideology.
The internal dimension of religion is the shared religious experience of individuals, while its external dimension is its institutionalization in the social sphere, where it reinforces traditional social relations and public morality. The institutional form of religion may rest either on religious experience or on religious ideology. Religion becomes ideology when it turns into a system of demands that people are expected to accept regardless of their own lived experience.
Worldview and World Picture
A worldview is an outlook on the world grounded in a system of ideas that reflect a person's own beliefs. Ideology is also a system of ideas that shapes a certain view of the world, but its purpose is to persuade others. A person may adopt an ideology as a tool for promoting their worldview in society, but they may also treat it pragmatically or even cynically, distinguishing between the ideology and their own convictions. A world picture is what a person perceives as reality, regardless of how they evaluate it.
A worldview is grounded in ideas that enable a person to determine what is right or wrong in the world, and how they should act. A world picture is grounded in principles and laws according to which the world can exist only in one way and not otherwise. On this basis, a person distinguishes what is possible in the world and what is, in principle, impossible. A person can change their worldview simply by reinterpreting certain ideas; however, such a shift is not enough to alter their world picture. For the world picture to change as well, one must reconstruct their understanding of the world on an entirely different set of principles.
The world picture explains how the world is structured; the worldview explains how the existing order of things is evaluated; and ideology is a tool for mobilizing and manipulating society.
The World Picture of the current Russian ruling regime:
Human history is driven by dark forces, and Russia is their opponent. The development of civilization merely demonstrates the triumph of these dark forces, which dominate advanced Western societies. However, their influence is weaker in less developed authoritarian regimes, which may therefore become potential allies of Russia.
The Worldview of the Russian ruling regime:
Russia’s supreme mission is the “reunification of its lands,” and anyone who resists this is an enemy. The lives of people and nations beyond Russia have no intrinsic value, and therefore they are expected to be grateful for the “opportunity” to be absorbed into Russia. Any territory that was once governed by Russia is regarded as inherently Russian. Ukraine’s aspiration for independence is a betrayal that must be punished; therefore, the war against Ukraine is justified.
The ideology of the contemporary Russian ruling regime
In the Soviet Union, only one ideology was permitted. It not only completely shaped the system of propaganda, education, and social control, but also imposed constraints on the country’s highest leadership. In particular, the party’s ideological directives enabled it to maintain control over the KGB.
Russian authorities view ideology as a tool of control and manipulation, one that should not place any limits on themselves. If necessary, it can easily shift its ideological stance and, depending on the situation, draw on various, even mutually contradictory, ideologies and ideological frameworks, such as rashism, the concept of the “Russian World”, the idea of Russia’s special historical path, Eurasianism, the cult of Stalin, the idealization of imperial Russia, and so-called “traditional values,” among others.
The Soviet system was founded on an ideology that resembled a monolith: on the one hand, it was very strong, yet on the other, it was fragile, since even a single challenge to any part of Soviet ideology could undermine the stability of the entire structure. Supporting the Soviet Union necessarily meant offering unconditional support for its ideology. The Russian authorities are not bound to any single ideology, which allows them to gain support from opposing political forces, since no specific ideological commitment is required from them. For them, what matters is not a shared ideology, but a shared worldview.
For example, during the Soviet period, church leaders understood that although they were completely dependent on the state, their religion was incompatible with Soviet ideology. This prevented religious organizations from openly supporting the Soviet Union’s aggressive wars. The only political campaign in which they participated was the so-called struggle for peace, which the Soviet authorities proclaimed at the level of official rhetoric.
Now, many Russian religious leaders are themselves advancing ideological narratives that justify Russia’s aggressive policies and its war against Ukraine. Moreover, they are beginning to weave their own religion into the worldview promoted by the Russian authorities, in which modern civilization is portrayed as something inherently evil. Such a practice did not exist during the Soviet period.
Life under shelling. Opytnе 2015. Scene of a woman's death in her own apartment. Photo: author's archive
War constantly changes its nature, and so does the life of people living under shelling. Only one thing remains unchanged – the constant threat of losing one’s home, being maimed, or killed. As an eyewitness, Nikolai Karpitsky gives an account of life in the Donbas frontline zone over the course of ten years.
The War in Donbas: Avdiivka, Opytne, and Maryinka Under Fire
How do people survive under shelling? – I tried to imagine that thirty years ago, when I joined protests against the war in Chechnya. Ten years ago, I saw it with my own eyes in frontline Avdiivka.
April 2015, Avdiivka. A relative lull compared to the shelling during the battles for Donetsk Airport. The first shelling began in July 2014 and reached its greatest intensity at the end of January to mid-February 2015. There was no electricity, no water. Now the fighting is mainly taking place in the industrial zone, yet artillery shells and Grad rockets still sporadically hit the city.
The Baptist church, where I stayed, is located on the very edge of the city – beyond it lie fields, Donetsk Airport, and the positions of the pro-Russian militants. The church porch is pockmarked with tiny shrapnel holes. I had to sleep to the sound of artillery cannonade. The first night, my imagination painted scenes of a shell flying into my room, but soon I, like all Avdiivka residents, stopped paying attention to the roar of artillery.
There are many young people in the church. One of them was injured by shrapnel.
“Because he crouched instead of lying down,” – explained an older man. – “Mud, puddle – it doesn’t matter, you must drop to the ground right away. A shell exploded very close to me too, but I managed to lie down, and all the fragments flew over me. If I had crouched – the blast wave would’ve torn my head off. …It’s good they don’t use aircraft,” – he continued, – “we’re still lucky. Airstrikes are real horror – you can’t hide from aerial bombs.”
A few years later, in 2023, Russian aviation destroyed Avdiivka with guided aerial bombs (GBUs).
Wieś Opytnе (między Awdijiwką a lotniskiem w Doniecku), styczeń 2016.
January 2016, the village of Opytne, near Donetsk Airport. Seventy people remain in the village. Not a single undamaged building. It seems the “hot phase” of the war ended long ago, yet the village is shelled constantly – artillery, mortars, tanks, and even reconnaissance and sabotage groups sneak in…
“And Grads?” – I ask.
“Haven’t seen Grads since autumn,” – says a local.
People live in the basement of an apartment building – civilians and soldiers together, like in a communal dormitory. A pipe sticks out from the basement: the residents have made an improvised stove there. Near the entrance, there’s a log used for chopping firewood. On the side of the building, a huge hole gapes in the wall from a direct shell hit – the place where a woman was killed in her apartment.
June 2017, Maryinka. A clean, beautiful town. It is constantly under shelling, yet the debris is immediately cleared away. What stands out are the well-kept lawns with flowers. Half-ruined houses; a few hundred meters away – the occupiers’ positions. The street is within range not only of artillery but even small arms fire – and yet people still take care of the flowers. I turned onto a parallel street where no one lives – ripe apricots hung from the trees. The locals said that while I was eating apricots, the militants could probably see the color of my eyes through their scopes.
Now this town no longer exists – the Russians have destroyed it completely.
Life Under Shelling. Marjinka 2017. A destroyed building next to well-kept lawns with flowers. Photo: author’s archive.
The First Months of the Full-Scale Invasion
February 24, 2022, Kyiv. Sirens wail. People don’t know how to react or what awaits them. Many try to settle in the metro, as if one could wait out the war there. A colleague wanted to go with her friends to Bucha – she thought they could take shelter there while the fighting raged in Kyiv. Fortunately, she didn’t make it – the road had already been closed.
February 25, 2022, Sloviansk. The city is living an ordinary life – the war hasn’t reached it yet. But people who have already experienced occupation know what it means, and calmly prepare for the trials ahead.
March 2022, Sloviansk. The city has found itself in the very eye of the hurricane – a deceptive calm inside the storm of war. Fierce battles rage in the Kyiv region (we have yet to learn about the occupiers’ atrocities there), and terrifying news comes from Mariupol. A powerful explosion nearby – right as I was about to start a class with students – turned out to be the first echo of the war in Sloviansk. The news later reported that a cruise missile had been shot down above us.
It was already dark when I first heard the rising whistle of a ballistic missile – one that is almost impossible to intercept. I braced for the impact, knowing there was no shelter from it. A massive explosion followed, but the windows held. I went outside to look – a field was burning in the distance. For now, such attacks on our city were only occasional. I thought of Mariupol, where people were enduring horrors beyond imagination.
Many have equipped basements where they can take shelter during shelling, but not everyone does. My “basement” is a large pit inside a flimsy shed – if it collapses, it would bury anyone inside. So, it’s more dangerous to hide there than to stay indoors. Besides, a missile strike always comes without warning.
April – May 2022, Sloviansk. The cannonade becomes constant and gradually moves closer to the city. Izyum has fallen, then Lyman. From time to time, missile strikes hit Sloviansk, and damage in the city becomes visible. More frightening than the rockets is the fiery wall of artillery that annihilates everything in its path – but even worse are the Russian soldiers who come to rape, torture, and kill. No one knows where, or if, they will be stopped.
Summer 2022, Sloviansk. The city came under regular shelling from multiple rocket launchers and became almost completely deserted. The enemy was already ten kilometers away but couldn’t cross the Siverskyi Donets River. If they managed to deploy tube artillery against Sloviansk, the city would be entirely destroyed – but Ukrainian forces prevented that from happening. There was no gas, no water, and electricity often went out for long stretches.
Another night of shelling – I’ve lost count of how many in a row. Explosions, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from my house – I keep guessing whether this time they’ll hit me or not. It can go on for over an hour.
July 3, 2022, Sloviansk. There was no electricity at home, so I was working online in the Pentecostal Good News Church. Suddenly, a series of loud explosions – probably around ten – rang out. People in the lobby moved away from the window; some ran to the basement, others into the yard to see where it had hit. I went out too. Nearby, plumes of smoke were rising from residential buildings – to the right, to the left, and straight ahead. A second series of explosions followed, even closer.
“Everyone to the basement!” – shouted the church attendant, waving his hands.
I went back to the table, packed up my laptop, and went down as well. The intense bombing stopped, followed by three more single explosions – no one paid attention to those anymore. Oleksandr Reshetnyk came over. Someone had already sent him a video showing a panoramic view of the shelling of Sloviansk: columns of smoke rising all along the length of the city. We counted a couple of dozen, though there may have been more. Oleksandr said the attack had been carried out either by a Uragan or a Smerch system. Later, I read in the news that six people had died and fifteen had been injured.
Shelling of Slavyansk on July 3, 2022.
Autumn 2022, Sloviansk. A successful counteroffensive pushed the enemy away from the city, marking the start of a long period of relative calm. Once or twice a week, a missile strike could still be heard in Sloviansk, and sometimes people were killed – but compared to the summer of 2022, it felt like a lull, and residents began returning. Now, about half of the prewar population lives in Sloviansk again. Still, when I speak of calm, I’m not objective – I live alone. It’s hard to tell a mother that attacks are “not that frequent” when at any moment a Russian missile could kill or maim her child.
2025 – The War Has Changed Its Nature
Summer 2025, Sloviansk. Guided aerial bombs (GBUs) have started hitting the city – rarely, but their impact is catastrophic. An artillery shell can destroy a room; a missile, an entire building entrance; but a GBU obliterates the whole structure. Enemy drones have gradually become part of everyday life. At first, they came singly and infrequently; later – in entire swarms. Aerial battles with drones are especially visible on clear nights, when the sky is full of stars and the Milky Way is shining. The sky is sliced by the tracer lines of anti-aircraft fire, flashes flicker overhead. The thought that a drone might fall straight onto your house is deeply unsettling.
Sometimes the buzzing of drones is long and monotonous – like mosquitoes circling endlessly above you. It can go on for more than an hour. Sometimes the buzzing suddenly intensifies and ends with an explosion – that’s when the drones dive from high altitude, giving anti-aircraft guns no time to react.
July 13, 2025, Sloviansk. A quiet morning. Nothing suggests danger. Suddenly – the rapid, rising sound of air being torn apart. A second later – a powerful explosion nearby. A guided bomb (GBU). I don’t yet know the consequences of the strike – perhaps someone’s life has already been cut short.
August 2, 2025, Sloviansk. At the train station market – a loud blast somewhere very close. A Lancet strike. A single hit – no air raid siren was sounded. People calmly went on with their business. A shopkeeper stepped out of her kiosk and asked matter-of-factly:
“From which direction did it hit?”
I waved my hand:
“From that side. The echo came from here.”
While I was biking home, there was another blast. Everyday life.
Now Kyiv is being bombed just as much, but there’s a difference in how residents of Kyiv and those of Donbas experience air raids. The flight time of missiles to Kyiv allows people to track Russian attacks through social media and decide whether to go down to a shelter, hide in a bathroom, or ignore the alert. In Donbas, the flight time is so short that people don’t even try to track or hide – they accept what happens as it is and continue with their daily routines.
August 15, 2025, Sloviansk. The night before, there was heavy shelling – one strike landed very close, making the windows rattle. Luckily, I managed to cook dinner before the power went out. In the morning, I checked the news – a private house had been hit, just a few hundred meters from me. I went to look – fire trucks were there, and the air smelled of burning. The house was destroyed down to the foundation; trees were felled, and all nearby buildings were damaged.
There’s a huge difference between sporadic shelling, like we have here, and systematic bombardment. Here, firefighters and repair crews keep working – by morning, the electricity was already restored. These isolated terrorist attacks have no real impact on the city’s life. The market was crowded with people; life goes on as usual. It would be a different story if the shelling became systematic – turning the city into ruins.
September 2025, Sloviansk. The shelling has intensified. It’s easier for me – I have a calm job: writing, teaching online. But what about repair workers who have to work in any weather, under shelling… or surgeons performing operations instead of hiding in bomb shelters? And they do keep working – they don’t try to leave the frontline city, even though they know the shelling will only grow worse, and hospitals are in the highest-risk zone.
I talked with people in the surgical ward. Explosions go off one after another – very close by. Many patients have just had surgery and can’t walk, yet they calmly discuss the attack. Moving an entire surgical department to a bomb shelter each time is absolutely impossible, so everyone stays where they are. That’s the kind of “Russian roulette” people live with here. They know they could die at any moment. And not necessarily in Sloviansk: recently there was news about a young family who had moved from Sloviansk to Kyiv – and were all killed there in a missile strike.
September 2025, Kramatorsk. I observe how ordinary residents talk with one another – everyday conversations about household matters now naturally include the topic of shelling. Many have relatives in different cities of Donbas, so everyone is concerned about where the bombs fell yesterday and who was killed. I met a witness to the horrific strike on the village of Yarova, not far from here. On the morning of September 9, 2025, the Russians dropped an aerial bomb on a group of pensioners standing in line to receive their pensions. Twenty-five people aged between 53 and 87 were killed, and nineteen more were wounded. A woman told me that at the epicenter of the explosion, body parts – arms, legs – were mixed with soil, while those on the periphery were simply blown apart. She said that people hadn’t received their pensions for two months and had finally come to collect them. Naturally, she also blamed the local authorities for failing to ensure safety.
The Kramatorsk City Hospital is a place where you can meet people from across Donbas. An elderly man had just been discharged; his daughter had come to take him by car to Druzhkivka, a nearby town. They were sitting and waiting – it wasn’t safe to leave yet, as drones were circling above the hospital.
“Reconnaissance drones?” – asked a man in the next bed.
“No, combat ones,” – the daughter replied. The sound of anti-aircraft guns rattled outside.
“My relative was also driving from Druzhkivka,” – said the man in the next bed, – “and a drone started following him after the checkpoint.”
I imagined what it must feel like – driving while knowing that at any moment the drone hovering above could strike your car. The man himself was also staying with relatives in Druzhkivka – his own home was in Kostiantynivka, which Russian forces are systematically destroying.
Druzhkivka lies between Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk and is shelled very often, though repair crews quickly fix the damage after each attack. In Kostiantynivka, however, nothing works anymore – there is no electricity, no water, and only about six thousand residents remain. Before taking a city, the Russians first destroy it completely – they know no other tactic.
Life Under Shelling. Kramatorsk 2025. People are treated here. Photo: author’s archive.
I also spoke with a retired officer who said that even in Chasiv Yar, of which almost nothing is left, there are still people living – maybe three or so. Even in conditions of mortal danger, elderly people are extremely reluctant to leave their homes. Ukrainian soldiers once tried to evacuate an old woman from Chasiv Yar, but she managed to reach their command and complain, and the soldiers were reprimanded for “rough treatment” of the local population.
The difference in how Ukrainian and Russian soldiers treat local residents is reflected in his remark:
“Toretsk and Horlivka are twin cities, like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The Russians are grinding Toretsk into rubble, while in Horlivka there’s still electricity and water – Russian soldiers can rest comfortably there before battle. I understand that striking residential areas is forbidden, but at least we could target the power supply system. This is a war for survival, yet our forces are prohibited from hitting critical infrastructure. I don’t understand it.”
October 2025, Ukraine. What we are experiencing in Donbas is only the beginning of a great drone war. Soon there will be no rear and no front – only a war of drones that can no longer be contained within the borders of Russia and Ukraine.
There is a widespread political myth, as if the residents of Donbas long for Russia. This is a dangerous myth: for the Kremlin it is a justification for invasion, for Western countries it is a reason to talk about «territorial exchange». But does this myth have a basis, Sloviansk resident Nikolai Karpitsky asks.
The residents of the Donetsk region are primarily characterized by a local, that is, regional identity, but a common Ukrainian identity is also emerging increasingly quickly. There is no Russian identity there: no one longs for Russia simply because they consider themselves Russian. There have indeed been pro-Russian moods and partly they persist, but these can be explained by other reasons.
«This is my land, regardless of who holds power here»
The formation of national identity is always a long process. Before the war, local identity was dominant in eastern Ukraine. A friend from Avdiivka told me after their town was shelled in 2015: «This is my land, regardless of who holds power here, Ukrainian or Russian.» Many considered it most important to be part of their town or district. Ukraine remained abstract to them: they traveled little within the country and watched almost no Ukrainian TV channels. What mattered to them was the «open space» of the former USSR, where their relatives and friends lived. It was precisely this local identity that Russian propaganda presented as Russian identity and used in 2014 to justify its incursion into eastern Ukraine.
According to one myth, the residents of eastern Ukraine were harassed because they wanted to speak Russian. In reality, language was not a fundamental issue before the war: people communicated in the mixed Russian-Ukrainian language, surzhyk. Everyone understood Ukrainian, and difficulties with the literary norm were rather a consequence of educational problems, which are now being successfully resolved. Today the younger generation in Donbas knows Ukrainian much better than the older generation did.
Soviet nostalgia and Russia's influence
Local political forces exploited the nostalgia for the «open space» and relied on regional identity. It is telling that Viktor Yanukovych's party bore the name Party of Regions. In confrontation with Kyiv they shaped a discourse that outwardly resembled a pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian attitude. Yet this did not mean that the residents were striving toward Russia by supporting such politicians. They were simply looking for a force that was closest to their local identity. People tacitly adopted the local political discourse, but not the political ideas of the pro-Russian parties.
Ordinary elderly residents of Donbas, who grew up in the Soviet Union, find it difficult to accept borders. Out of habit, they do not watch Ukrainian but Russian TV channels. Even so, a Russian identity does not form in them. Above all, they feel like locals and evaluate what Ukraine and Russia can offer them from that point of view. The effectiveness of propaganda plays a big role. Ukrainian propaganda is chaotic, it lacks a unified center and monopoly, and in most cases it does not reach such a Donbas resident, who becomes an easy prey for centralized and systematic Russian propaganda.
That is why the most absurd myths spread among people with little education. Some are convinced that it is not the Russian but the Ukrainian army that is shelling their towns. Others, who have lost their homes, dream that when Russia comes they will get a job and a new apartment in Donetsk. Yet these people do not form a separate social group. The majority of Donbas residents did not support the so-called pro-Russian parties out of longing for Russia, but in the hope of their ability to «reach an agreement» with both Kyiv and Moscow. People just wanted to make their lives easier, for example, to visit relatives on both sides of the front line, but most of those who voted in the last elections for the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life by no means want to go to Russia and categorically reject the idea of «giving up land in return for peace.»
The so-called referendums organized by pro-Russian forces in 2014 in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be considered an expression of the people's will not only because they were legally void, but also because they took place without any public debate. The high turnout is explained by something else: people could not yet imagine the scale of the future war and repressions, but they felt afraid of what the future might bring. Participation in such a simulation of a referendum created the illusion of influencing the situation and became a psychological defense against helplessness. Many convinced themselves that they were not voting for secession from Ukraine, but only for the financial independence of the region, so as not to give everything away to Kyiv. At least this is how some residents explained their participation in the referendum to me.
The formation of Ukrainian identity in conditions of war
Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine accelerated the formation of a Ukrainian identity among the residents of Donbas largely thanks to their interaction with volunteers from all over the country. In 2016 I lived in a Baptist church on the outskirts of Avdiivka near the abandoned Donetsk airport for a month. Volunteers from Volyn, Christians, who delivered food to frontline villages, came to us. One of them asked me about the local youth: «How do we help them? They only hear pro-Russian propaganda and do not know how Ukraine lives.» I answered: «Do not try to persuade them, just invite them to Lutsk.» In this way the young people of Avdiivka could see with their own eyes that Ukraine is a normal European country. Over ten years, the views of many Donbas residents have changed significantly under the influence of such interaction. Whereas earlier many were critical of Ukraine, now they remain critical of the authorities but not of Ukraine, because they consider themselves part of Ukraine as well. Their attitude toward Russia has also changed.
The experience of shelling is fundamentally different in Kyiv and in Donbas. In the capital city, after seeing a warning on social media, people have a few minutes to decide whether to hide in the bathroom, go down to a shelter, or ignore the signal. In Donbas there is no time to react. Here a person gets used to living in constant danger. During shooting many continue their activities or observe what is happening with surprising calm. Gradually, the realization comes: an entire state is working to kill you, and you can only hope that the next strike will not hit you. Some cannot accept this realization and still believe that it is their own who are shooting, but most understand: it is Russia that brings death.
The fundamental contradiction of the aggressor's policy and its inability to understand Ukraine
In eastern Ukraine the situation is fundamentally different from the Baltic states, where Russian communities live separately and clash with the language barrier and foreign cultural stereotypes. In Ukraine there is no ethnic problem: society is not ethnically divided, and in the ten years I have lived here, no one has ever asked me about my nationality. Despite Russian propaganda, the Russian-speaking residents of Donbas do not consider language a problem: everyone understands Ukrainian and communicates calmly in surzhyk, and most are completely fine with that.
Putin can indeed speculate about linguistic and ethnic contradictions in the Baltic states. In the case of Ukraine he unfortunately had to invent a myth, as if the rights of Russian-speakers were being restricted there. And he did find support, though minimal. Yet the reasons do not lie in language or ethnicity, but in ideology: part of the residents, the so-called vatniks, perceive the «Russian world» as a substitute for the Soviet communist system.
The main contradiction is that Soviet ideology was internationalist, but the current Russian power uses its tools to carry out an overtly chauvinistic, essentially Nazi policy. This fundamental contradiction of Russian policy determines its future defeat, despite the fact that at present it is better mobilized for waging a war of attrition than Ukraine and other European countries.
Do the most oppressed communities really constitute an opposition to dictatorship? The Russian authorities use the concept of “traditional religions of Russia” as the basis for persecuting all religions they deem non-traditional – in particular, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. In 2011, intervention from India saved the movement from a complete ban in Russia. However, today many Krishnaites trust anti-Ukrainian Kremlin propaganda more than their own fellow believers in Ukraine. Perhaps this is how Stockholm syndrome manifests itself, closely tied to the identity crisis of Russian Hare Krishnas.
Repression and Betrayal of Fellow Believers
The repressive apparatus in Russia develops according to the same logic as any bureaucracy in an authoritarian system: in order to justify its growth, it must constantly expand the circle of potential victims. The simplest way is to ban some religious organization from the “non-traditional” list. This opens new opportunities: bonuses, career advancement, expanding staff. For this very purpose, harsh laws restricting missionary activity were adopted in Russia, and in 2017 the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization was banned.
But repression could have started much earlier. Back in 2011, the Tomsk prosecutor’s office tried to declare the sacred book of the Krishnaites – the Bhagavadgita as It Is with commentary by ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada – as extremist by the court. Fortunately, they failed. Otherwise, as early as 2012, mass temple closures and arrests of Krishnaites on charges of extremism would have begun, along with parallel processes against other faiths.
Six months before the trial over the Bhagavadgita, in the village of Kandinka, Tomsk region, local authorities resorted to bureaucratic manipulations to achieve the demolition of Krishnaites houses built on legally acquired land. At that time, representatives of different faiths in Tomsk decided to support the Hare Krishnas and began holding regular meetings. Thus, the Tomsk Interfaith Dialogue was born
I compare the position of the Interfaith Dialogue participants then and now, 14 years later. Back then, everyone sympathized with the Krishnaites whose houses were demolished. But at least they still had time to leave calmly and take their belongings. Now the Russian army is destroying entire cities in Ukraine, and many people find themselves in a far worse situation – forced to flee, abandoning everything. About half of the Interfaith Dialogue participants either left Russia, as I did, or went into internal emigration. Only those loyal to the regime remained, and the dialogue has turned into its opposite. If I had the chance, I would ask them: “What is the point of staying in a religion if you have abandoned your fellow believers in Ukraine?”
The Trial of the Bhagavadgita
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) had been preparing for the trial of the Bhagavadgita for a long time – at least two years, as far as I know – before handing the case over to the Tomsk prosecutor’s office. But it is unlikely that they themselves would have come up with the idea of targeting this particular book. During the trial, the prosecutor’s representative not only said nothing about the content of the book but could not even pronounce its title correctly. All the ideological framing for the attempt to ban this book was provided by Maxim Stepanenko, head of the missionary department of the Tomsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, while his immediate superior – the diocesan bishop – deliberately took a neutral stance.
I do not think the FSB or the prosecutor’s office cared about the doctrine of the Krishnaites; they wanted to ban the book for material and career benefits. For the head of the Orthodox missionary department, however, the fight against the Krishnaites was perceived as a struggle against enemies of the “true faith.” Although he spoke on behalf of Orthodoxy, in practice he embodied the opposite – a quasi-religious ideology of seeking an enemy to fight by all possible means. Today, it is precisely this ideology that the Russian authorities use to justify the necessity of destroying Ukraine. Its essence is the denial of other people’s right to exist. Back then, during the trial of the Bhagavadgita, it was about the Krishna devotees alone; now it is about all Ukrainians. From the standpoint of any religious tradition, such an ideology is considered demonic.
Nikolai
Karpitsky at the trial of the Bhagavadgita on August 12, 2011. Photo: author's
archive
Only the Selfless Defenders of the Bhagavadgita Now Selflessly Support Ukraine
It is often wrongly assumed that all Orthodox Christians support the authorities and the persecution of other religions, while the representatives of other religions stand for justice. In reality, things are more complex. There were Orthodox Christians who supported the Krishnaites and, during the trial of the Bhagavadgita, openly defended it. And today there are Krishnaites who support the war and refuse to listen to their Ukrainian fellow believers. How many are there? In 2024, Yulia Fil, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, conducted research, asking Tomsk devotees an indirect question: “Under what conditions would you be ready to resume communication with your Ukrainian fellow believers after the war?”
The results showed:
– 27% are willing to communicate unconditionally and believe that one must ask forgiveness for Russia’s actions;
– 52% are willing to communicate on the condition that political disagreements are not raised – these are the ones who see their Ukrainian fellow believers as some abstraction and do not acknowledge Russia’s crimes against them;
– about 21% regard their Ukrainian fellow believers as enemies and do not wish to resume contact.
The Bhagavadgita was defended not only by Krishnaites but also by scholars and representatives of other faiths, including Orthodox Christianity – and as a rule, these same people still stand with the Ukrainian devotees of Krishna and oppose Russian fascism. However, when it comes to the former defenders of the Bhagavadgita within ISKCON, there is no such clarity. For example, on YouTube one can find a recording of Enver Izmailov, head of the Tomsk ISKCON community and one of the defenders of the Bhagavadgita at the trial. In this video, he engages in an indirect debate with the contemporary ideologue of Russian fascism, Alexander Dugin, adopting his intellectual framework and discussing how exactly one should justify Russia’s “special path.” Ukrainian Krishnaites were shocked by what they saw, but they had no opportunity to engage in dialogue with Enver Izmailov, since, in his opinion, they were “not yet ready for communication.”
This reveals the paradox: people who do not belong to the Hare Krishna movement but who selflessly rose to defend the Bhagavadgita turned out to be closer to the Ukrainian Krishnaites than many ISKCON spiritual leaders. My hypothesis is this: if someone who is not a representative of Hare Krishna takes up the fight for the movement, they expect neither material nor spiritual personal gain. For the same reason, such a person will just as selflessly support Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression. But if an ISKCON representative defends their spiritual tradition for the sake of personal spiritual or material well-being, then they will adapt to the authorities – even if that means supporting something that contradicts their own religion.
The Crisis of Religious Identity
Thus, a striking symptom of a crisis of religious identity: instead of supporting their fellow believers being bombed by Russia, a religious authority reflects on Russia’s special path. Unfortunately, this is not the only symptom.
The charitable vegetarian food distribution project Food for Life was initiated by ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada and became an important means of presenting the Krishnaites to society. However, the Donetsk branch of Food for Life, operating in the occupied territory, nowhere mentions its ties to ISKCON, and vegetarianism – which for any devotee has a religious meaning – is presented merely as healthy eating. At the same time, it publishes on social media expressions of gratitude from the occupation authorities for helping local residents and emphasizes its identification with the “vast Motherland,” i.e., with Russia. One can only wonder whether these authorities even realize that they are dealing with Hare Krishna.
However, religious communities differ from secular ones in that when they lose the ability to carry out their spiritual mission, they lose the very meaning of their existence – even if they continue to perform important social services. Under a dictatorship, many Russian religious organizations are forced to adapt in order to survive, which at times not only prevents them from fulfilling their spiritual mission but leads them to adopt positions that contradict their own religion. In such cases, identification with imperial Russia begins to conflict with, or even suppress, identification with their own religious tradition.
In Captivity of State Ideology
Unlike some other Russian religious organizations, ISKCON Russia did not take part in official events openly supporting the invasion of Ukraine, such as the roundtable “World Religions Against the Ideology of Nazism and Fascism in the 21st Century” on March 29, 2022. The organization granted each of its followers the freedom to determine their own stance on the war. The official position of ISKCON Russia is “law-abidingness,” without any public evaluation of the government’s actions. In practice, however, such “law-abidingness” often turns into demonstrative support.
For example, on October 1, 2022, Alexander Khakimov, a member of ISKCON’s Governing Body Commission from Russia and one of its most influential spiritual teachers, insisted on the necessity of complying with state demands when asked about mobilization:
“As for military action, this also applies to our martial duty, to the laws of the state. It is not simply an unjustly imposed obligation but something destined for me by fate. This is my duty… I submit only to the will of Providence and accept it as the will of Krishna. There is law – I must follow the law.”
Later, on October 17, 2023, he went even further, stating:
“It is duty… He who dies in the performance of duty is elevated, purified of his karma.”
Earlier, on June 5, 2022, addressing his followers, he expressed admiration for Putin, calling him the only ruler in the world among the leaders of secular states who allegedly acknowledges the supreme authority of God. Some less influential representatives of ISKCON Russia voiced even more radical statements, framing Russia’s war against Ukraine not in Vaishnava categories but in a Manichaean spirit – as a battle of absolute good against absolute evil, with modern Western civilization identified with evil.
When religious leaders compromise between their spiritual mission and accommodation to political power, they call into question the very meaning of their tradition’s existence. And when their followers begin to trust state propaganda more than their Ukrainian fellow believers, religion turns into its opposite – a quasi-religious ideology, which inevitably produces a crisis of religious identity.
Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm syndrome is a protective psychological mechanism that arises in situations of fear and helplessness. The victim subconsciously begins to identify with the aggressor, developing trust and even affection toward him. Its emergence is influenced by several factors:
– dependence on the aggressor, which drives the victim to search for signs of humanity in the aggressor's actions;
– learned helplessness, where even the slightest signs of kindness from the aggressor are perceived as something particularly valuable;
– fear, which the person defends against by self-suggestion, convincing himself that they are "on the same side" with the aggressor;
– emotional isolation, which leads to the transfer of positive feelings intended for close loved ones onto the aggressor.
All these signs fully describe the situation with the Krishnaites in Russia. The authorities created a threat for them – attempting to ban the movement, but at the same time, they showed "humanity" by allowing it to exist. However, this decision can be reversed at any moment, which creates a sense of complete dependence. In such a situation, the Krishnaites begin to look for positive aspects in the authorities, for example, in the fact that Putin talks about God and "traditional values"; they lose emotional contact with their co-believers in Ukraine and convince themselves that they, together with Putin, are "on the same side" in opposition to the "immoral West."
Naturally, the Krishnaites identify not only with their tradition but also with their country. This is what drives many Ukrainian devotees to defend their homeland with arms in hand, despite the fact that the core of their doctrine is the principle of ahimsa – nonviolence. However, even in this case, their religious identity dominates over their national one.
Krishnaites
honor the memory of their fellow believers who died for Ukraine. Photo:
Facebook page “Spiritual Matter”
In Russia, however, the situation is different: the Stockholm syndrome of Russian Krishna devotees pushes religious identity into the background. The problem is not that they identify themselves with Russia, but that their image of Russia is not cultural but imperial in nature. For them, Russia is any territory where Russian power has been established. Accordingly, all peoples who resist Russian expansion are automatically perceived as hostile. This leads to a split in the common space of communication among followers of the Hare Krishna movement and, along with it, to the loss of integrity in religious worldview, which is replaced by an ideological quasi-religion that proclaims Western civilization to be the source of evil.
It should be noted that this process takes place much more rapidly in the occupied territories of Ukraine than in Russia itself. Similar processes can also be observed in other religious communities that the Russian authorities classify as “non-traditional,” for example, in Evangelical churches.
And yet, despite the pressure from the Russian authorities and their own religious environment, many Russian Krishna devotees—as well as representatives of other confessions—have managed to preserve genuine faith, remain morally on the side of Ukraine, and seek ways to ask Ukrainians for forgiveness for the crimes of their country. However, for obvious reasons, I cannot speak openly about them.
