Putin is not irrational or mad, but rather operates according to a coherent ideological logic that follows deeply seated worldviews rooted in Russian Orthodox Christianity and imperial history, even if his actions appear absurd to outsiders

Analysis of Putin's speeches shows an increasing frequency of Christian eschatological and historical statements with tsarist references since 2000, and these radicalizing uses of terminology are triggered not only by foreign events like NATO expansion, but also by domestic key events such as security threats and calls for democratization

The Russian Orthodox Church will not oppose Putin's war because there is no just war theory in Orthodox theology—unlike the Western tradition where limits on warfare are embedded in doctrine, Russian Orthodoxy teaches that when the Tsar or emperor unleashes war, it is automatically righteous because he knows what forces of evil must be stopped

Putin has positioned himself as the principal historian of Russia and deliberately uses history as a producer of social-cultural appraisal structures to serve the mental mobilization of Russian society, a practice ongoing since the inception of his rule in 2000

During Putin's 2018 presidential inauguration, bombastic music echoed through the Grand Kremlin Palace, cannons fired as salutes, and a choir sang 'Hail, hail our Russian Tsar,' a song commissioned by Nicholas I in the 19th century from an opera, with this performance occurring at the location where Tsars used to be coronated

The Katechon was a common figure in European history until 1806 when the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded, at which point the concept was supposedly ended, but Putin is now trying to revive it by positioning Russia as the modern restrainer against evil

Domestically in Russia, people are seeing evidence of contamination as the projected greatness and uniqueness of Russia fails to manifest—the sanctions have effects, the world doesn't like Russia, Ukrainians are not their brothers—which are signs that the dystopian ideology is beginning to corrode among some believers

De Graaf and her research team created a corpus of 11,000+ speeches, statements, declarations, and interviews made by Putin from 1999 to 2022, collected from the Kremlin website using automated web scraping code before the website was taken down one week after the Ukraine invasion

From his inauguration in 2000, Putin stressed the importance of Christianity for himself personally, stating Russia has always been a pious and religious country, claiming he reads the Bible regularly, and keeping an icon and Bible in his airplane when traveling

The research team also collected speeches by Medvedev and Lavrov and found that they follow the same radicalization trajectory as Putin and are dependent on what Putin says, suggesting that if Putin were removed from power, another siloviki (Putin's security service cronies) would likely continue the same ideological trajectory

In Orthodox theology, the bicephalous eagle represents not true separation of powers between church and state but the dominance of state power, as the theology of 'symphonia' (harmony) means unity where the state is the main leading force in history and the church must follow

In 2007, Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club that the basic principles Russia should propagate are the ideals of monarchy, the link with the people, and Orthodoxy, echoing the triad of nationality, Orthodoxy, and autocracy articulated by Tsar Nicholas I in 1833 as a response to the Decembrist revolt

In the aftermath of February 24 invasion, despite unfounded arguments about the necessity to denazify Ukraine, Putin's declarations had an imperial ideological ring, focusing on consolidating Russian society around defending itself to preserve national culture, with the invasion elevated to a metaphysical struggle between good and evil

Contamination requires countervailing force to make believers recognize that their ideological goals won't be achieved in practice, not to convince them ideologically that their ideas are wrong, which is why rational arguments with neo-Nazis and extremists don't work but showing them their ideas cannot be translated into practice does

If Putin dies or is toppled, it could be a major trigger event for contamination, as the sacred leader's apparent non-invincibility could undermine the ideology, similar to how al-Baghdadi's death by American forces contributed to ISIS's delegitimation

Putin presented Russian Orthodox Christianity as a substitute for the communist state ideology that had gone bankrupt, stating that after the October Revolution the Soviet state went to great lengths to destroy Russia's spiritual and religious roots and that attempts to replace the Bible with the moral code of communism failed

In December 2014, Putin equated Crimea and Sevastopol's civilizational and sacred importance to Russia with the status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for Islam and Judaism, using Christian eschatological language to justify territorial expansion

Putin published an essay on the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine in summer 2021 that initially barely raised an eyebrow in the West, despite being the prelude to a full-scale invasion, showing that Putin had already begun acting as a history teacher to justify his imperial mission

On March 6, 2022, Patriarch Kirill of the Moscow Patriarchy delivered a sermon equating gay parades with sin and depicting the war as a metaphysical battle between Russia and the Satanic West, claiming that countries accepting gay parades cannot remain human civilization

While talking about Ukraine and Zelenskyy in an interview with Oliver Stone in 2019, Putin connected ultra-nationalism about the united identity of Great Russians, Little Russians, and White Russians to an exclusive role view of Christian Orthodoxy as Russian state ideology