The patriarch has tried to distance himself recently from the country’s political leaders, stressing his superiority in the relationship between Russia’s political and clerical power. At least two issues underscore a gap between Church and State, namely the response to the demographic crisis with monks criticised for being celibate, and the ban on organised prayers in private homes.
Ever since the first mobilisation for the war, the Association of Russian Doctors and Gynaecologists had reported that the demand for the procedure of preserving one's own genetic material had greatly increased. Proekt Veter has collected the stories of the wives of soldiers killed at the front who nonetheless became pregnant with IVF after their death.
Clean' energy in Russia remains just over 30%, and entire sectors such as automotive and heating still run exclusively on fossil fuels. Mind you, with the invasion of Ukraine, hopes of seeing Moscow as a major contributor to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism have faded.
Proposals and ideas about ending the war are multiplying, but for Putin, any negotiations with Trump would only be an intermediate stage in an ongoing process. For Ukraine the situation is becoming increasingly grim, not only due to the uncertainties of Western aid but also to the decreasing participation of Ukrainians in the war effort.
In the separatist region of Georgia that has been under Moscow's control for 15 years, thousands of people rose up against the government's agreements with Russian oligarchs. Bžanija announced the step back ‘to preserve stability and constitutional order’. These are not unprecedented events for Sukhumi, which is nevertheless destined to remain firmly in the hands of the Kremlin.
Author Viktor Erofeev, from exile in Berlin since 2022, publishes a novel entitled Velikij Gopnik, illustrating how Putinism emerged from Russian subconscious and the backyards of Leningrad to reach levels of extremism towards its very soul, incapable of ‘accepting a normal life’.
