Vladimir Putin has had his nuclear bombs blessed by the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Patriarch Kirill declared the Kremlin’s nuclear arsenal is evidence of God’s “grace and mercy” in a rambling service at a convent near Sarov, the city where Soviet scientists built the country’s first atom bomb.
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Kirill claimed that God helped the Soviet Union to produce the weapon in 1949 – despite atheism being official state policy at the time.
He attributed the bomb’s creation to the prayers of St Seraphim, a Russian mystic who died more than a century before the weapon was developed.
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“The creation of this formidable weapon in our country, and in this specific place, was no coincidence; all of this came to pass, in no small measure, through the prayers of our venerable and God-fearing Father Seraphim of Sarov,” Kirill said.
He also called nuclear weapons a “shield for the Motherland”.
They had stopped Russia’s enemies from “destroying” the Soviet Union and “enslaving” its population during the Cold War, he argued.
“The humble elder, through his holiness, through his prayer, contributed to the continued existence of our people and our country,” he said.
Kirill made no mention of whether divine intervention also played a part in America’s development of the first nuclear bomb in 1945 – nor Britain’s six years later.
St Seraphim is known as the “miracle-maker of Sarov,” where he reportedly lived as a hermit for 25 years.
Believers claim he once prayed on a boulder for a thousand days and nights.
He was canonised in 1903, despite being primarily associated with a message of peace.
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The Russian Orthodox Church has nonetheless embraced him as the spiritual patron of the nation’s nuclear programme.
The monastery at Sarov was shut down during the Soviet anti-religion drive of the 1920s, with monks killed or dispatched to labour camps.
The town’s cathedral was demolished by Soviet authorities in 1951 but later reconstructed under President Putin, who claims to be a devout Christian.
Sarov now houses Russian nuclear research facilities, and access to the town is tightly restricted.
Kirill is an alleged former KGB spy and is subject to UK sanctions.
He has also stated that Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine will receive God’s forgiveness for their sins – and has labelled Russia’s invasion of its neighbour a “holy war”.
His service at the Seraphim-Diveyevo convent concluded with a prayer for President Putin, whose lengthy time in power he has described as a “miracle of God”.
Mr Putin himself has described the West as “satanic” and rejected its liberalism, which he claimed had turned it away from the “traditional” and “religious” values enjoyed in Russia.
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