The feat of Boris and Gleb against the cult of war
The memory of the first saints of Rus’ exposes a terrifying distortion of meaning. Their refusal to shed a brother’s blood shatters modern propaganda of violence beneath church vaults.
May 15 marks the translation of the relics of Boris and Gleb. Boris and Gleb were the first saints canonized in Rus’. It is crucial to understand why: not for martyrdom at the hands of pagans, but for refusing to resist their own brother. They refused to raise a hand against Sviatopolk, even knowing he was coming to kill them. The essence of their feat lies in this – they chose to die themselves rather than spill their brother’s blood in a struggle for power.
In the context of the present war, their example turns everything upside down. If Boris and Gleb are held up as the ideal of sanctity, then any ideology that justifies the killing of “those of the same blood and the same faith” for the sake of state interests or “historical justice” stands in direct opposition to that ideal.
The substitution of the Gospel with imperial ideology
The tragedy is that religion often becomes hostage to ethnophyletism – the sin in which national or state interests are placed above unity in Christ. How and when did this happen? The transformation of part of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church from pastors into political commissars did not occur overnight. It was preceded by decades of fusion between Church and state. Step by step, the Church began serving the interests of politicians, compromising evangelical values along the way.
The result of this merger is that instead of calls for peace – natural to the Church – sermons began to appear about “washing away sins” through participation in military action. This is a direct imitation of the most radical forms of other religions and has nothing whatsoever in common with Orthodox canon law.
For centuries the Church sought to remain "aligned" with power, and in doing so lost its prophetic voice.
When Caesar commands killing, a Church that has forgotten Boris and Gleb begins searching for justifications for Caesar instead of reminding him of the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”
The ideology of the “Russian World” has replaced the universal Gospel. Christ came for all people – “there is neither Greek nor Jew.” Ideology, however, divided the world into “ours” – bearers of some special spirituality – and “the others,” enemies to be destroyed or “corrected” by force.
Today, Saints Boris and Gleb stand silently between two armies as a living reproach. Their sanctity proves that Christianity is not about victory at any cost, but about fidelity to Christ even at the cost of one’s own life.
“He is my brother, and if he kills me, I shall be a martyr before my Lord,” Boris says in the chronicle.
When hierarchs bless weapons aimed against fellow believers, they commit what can only be called “theological suicide.” A Church that justifies aggression loses the right to call itself a Mother and instead becomes part of the machinery of state coercion. This is a crisis from which Orthodoxy may need decades to recover, relearning how to distinguish what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God.
The heresy of justifying fratricidal war
The phrase “Holy War” in the mouth of today’s leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is an oxymoron. In Christianity, war can at best be regarded as a tragic necessity – never as “a path to paradise.”
The claim that death in war “washes away all sins” is outright heresy. It replaces the Sacrament of Repentance and the sacrifice of Christ with mechanical killing and death on the battlefield. When hierarchs consecrate missiles with the names of saints, they transform religion into a cult of Mars, where Christ becomes nothing more than a convenient label.
The upper hierarchy of the ROC today acts not as "the conscience of the nation," but as a major contractor. It fulfills an ideological commission.
The elite needed a justification for a war of conquest that would sound loftier than “we need assets and territories.” The ROC supplied the brand of a “struggle against the Antichrist.” While ordinary people are “disposed of,” defense and reconstruction budgets are absorbed by the very interest groups that initiated the war in the first place.
A verdict upon modern church militarism
The holy princes Boris and Gleb refused to participate in the “elite power struggles” of their era. Sviatopolk the Accursed sought to clear the field for his sole rule through the right of force. Their refusal is a judgment upon militarism itself. They showed that it is better to become a victim than an instrument – or ideologue – of violence.
Their silence cries out against the clergy who today justify fratricide.
If Boris and Gleb had listened to today’s ROC preachers, they would have gathered armies and marched to “denazify” Kyiv or defend their “geopolitical interests.” But they chose the Gospel instead.
What we are witnessing is a terrifying substitution. Instead of “the Church as the Body of Christ,” we see “the Church as a ministry of ideological support.”
This is not a war for Christ. It is a war against Christ carried out in His very name.
Christ sacrificed Himself for the salvation of humanity. The spirit of militarism preached today calls for sacrificing others for the sake of the state or an “idea.” This is a complete inversion: instead of “lay down your life for your friends” – voluntary self-sacrifice born of love – we are offered “kill another person for geopolitics.” That is the satanic inversion of meaning.
The path of Sviatopolk instead of the Gospel
Christianity is the religion of life and resurrection. The militarized ideology promoted by the ROC today creates instead a cult of death. When death in war is proclaimed “the highest good” and “the shortest road to paradise,” earthly life itself – God’s gift – loses its value.
In Christian tradition, Satan is “a murderer from the beginning.” If a religious structure begins glorifying killing and justifying it through “sacred goals,” it inevitably begins serving the one who thirsts for blood rather than the One who brought peace.
The Beatitudes – "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Blessed are the merciful," "Love your enemies" – are the constitution of Christianity. Whoever calls for aggression automatically excludes himself from among Christ’s followers.
One cannot simultaneously glorify Christ and call for entire cities to be “wiped off the face of the earth.” That is apostasy in the form of life itself. A man may wear a cross and cassock, but if his words sow hatred and death, his spiritual DNA becomes the opposite of Christ’s.
Here the clergy take on the role of Judas – but on the scale of an entire people. They “sell” Christ for thirty pieces of silver: state subsidies, status, and proximity to power. Supporting the “cleansing” of populations under the guise of “defending holy things” is cynicism in its highest form. It transforms the Church into a machine for producing cannon fodder.
Boris and Gleb were proclaimed saints precisely because they broke the cycle of violence. Whoever calls them saints today while blessing tanks is a liar.
In essence, the modern ideology of the ROC is the ideology of Sviatopolk the Accursed. This is that very “spiritual delusion” and “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” against which Scripture warned. It is a conscious choice in favor of darkness disguised as light, where the name of God is used as a cover for the cruelest interests of earthly elites.
