THE IDEA OF "RUSSIAN WORLD" AS THE THEOLOGY OF WAR OF THE MOSCOW PATRIARCH KIRILL: BEFORE THE PROBLEM STATEMENT

The article analyses the propaganda statements of Moscow Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev from February to September 2022 on justification and justification of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. It also examines the development and analyses the main ideological postulates of the modern Russian fundamentalist and militant doctrine of the "Russian world", actively implemented in the Russian Orthodox Church MP by Kirill Gundyaev and the FSB since the late 1990s and which served as the ideological justification for Russian aggression against Ukraine and the genocide of the Ukrainian people in 2022. The author concludes that the Moscow patriarch is creating some new faith of his own, a doctrine that contradicts the teachings of the Orthodox Church. In particular, the ideas of "atoning sacrifice" of fallen Russian soldiers he proclaims are in fact a borrowing of the ideas of shahidism from the radical-fundamentalist currents of the Islamic world, according to which a warrior killed in war with "infidels" (jihad) receives automatic forgiveness of sins and goes to "heaven". Consequently, the author concludes that such ideas expressed by Cyril Gundyaev have nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, the term "Russian world" itself was introduced as a separate ideologeme along the lines of "the Islamic world". The author notes that the modern hybrid ideology of the "Russian world" is not original, but contains many borrowings and plagiarism from other ideologies and theories and has a number of features that are much closer to Islam than to Christianity. In particular, among such borrowings is the idea of the "Russian world" as a separate "megacivilisation" with its own "traditional values", "spiritual crosses" and "sacral mission" which distinguishes "the Russian God-bearing people" from other peoples of the world and which opposes the "anti-civilisation" of the West. In essence, it is borrowing the Islamist fundamentalist idea of political unity of Muslims around the world regardless of national and racial differences to oppose the West. Borrowing similar ideas and slogans from fundamentalist Islamist movements, modern ideologues of the Russian world have essentially attempted to transplant the ideas of a global Islamic Caliphate onto Orthodox soil. In the new Russian mythmaking, the ideal of a medieval holy Caliphate has been replaced by a medieval myth-dream of "holy Russia". As a result of this 'disguise', replacing names and certain provisions and principles, a new hybrid ideology emerged, outwardly called 'Orthodox Christianity', but in practice bearing more resemblance to radical Islamism than to Christianity. In addition, an analysis of the fundamentalist ideology of the 'Russian world' shows that it also bears many similarities to German Nazism and Italian Fascism, which were admired by some Russian ideologues around K. Gundyaev and V. Putin. Putin's entourage. The author concludes that Moscow Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev was the one who formulated and presented Putin and his entourage with a new militant fundamentalist quasi-religious ideology, adopted by the Putin regime in its aggression against Ukraine and which is now causing genocide and deaths of Ukrainian civilians