On Russia

Nation First airs a Russian Orthodox priest's thoughts on Russia being the last Christian stronghold against Western decay

Feb 12, 2025

Dear friend,

What follows is an opinion piece by a Russian Orthodox priest on the state of affairs in Russia and Ukraine. It is a full-throated defence of Russia and its actions and a condemnation of Ukranian and Western actions regarding Russia, and so, it is—by its nature—controversial and confrontational.

Nation First has covered the demagoguery and corruption in Zelenskyy’s Ukraine before, and also how Putin is working against the globalist elite machinations in the West. For that, we’ve received criticism because we are swimming, not just against the tide of mainstream narrative, but almost against a tidal wave of pro-Zelenksyy and anti-Russia propaganda.

I’d ask that you keep your mind open to alternative points of view such as this. And, of course, we are always happy to take submissions representing alternative points of view on such matters.

Until next time, God bless you, your family and nation.

Take care,

George Christensen

Russia: The Last Christian Stronghold Against Western Decay

— Fr Michael Wood (a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia)

Russia today is not Stalin’s Russia, nor is it Hitler’s Germany. Yes, it is strongly led, but it is not a dictatorship; it is strongly led towards a Christian civilisation, and modern westerners have no conception of what that means. It frightens them, because they have never seen a strong Christian empire; it is frightening unknown territory for the modern licentious westerner.

Russia is a re-Christianising nation that stands against the moral decay and atheistic globalism of the West.
Putin leads a strong Christian state modeled on Byzantium, where Church and State work in harmony to protect traditional values.
Ukraine is deeply corrupt and controlled by oligarchs, with neo-Nazi battalions like Azov committing atrocities against Russian-speaking civilians.
Western elites, led by BlackRock and Vanguard, manipulate wars for profit, using Ukraine as a pawn while pushing their degenerate cultural agenda.
Russia will not retreat, as it is reclaiming its historic Christian territory and standing as the last bastion against Western moral collapse.

The important point to bear in mind is that Orthodox Christianity has totally supplanted communism as the ideology of Russia. Russia has returned, over these past thirty-four years, to her thousand-year home as a Christian state. The sense of a holy destiny of Kievan Rus and Mother Russia has never left Russia and President Putin is its champion. The Orthodox Church in Russia is building and opening three churches a day and it has been doing this for years; it boasts one hundred and ten million active members – the communist party of the Russian Federation, has just six hundred thousand members.

With thirty-four years of building, Russian Christianity now has a full generation of lifelong members, who are fully immersed in the highly traditional Orthodox Church’s view of what a moral Christian society is. That world-view is almost totally at variance from the modern “culture” of the Amero-Euro west. Christian Russia roundly rejects the western atheistic permissive culture and wants to wall itself off from that culture.

In Putin’s mind it goes further; he reportedly said in a speech in 2013:

We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of western civilisation. They are denying the moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual.

Kiev must be taken, in his mind, to preserve the Christian battle. And there are many Christians in the west who agree with his sentiments.

If you want to understand Russia today you’d better study Byzantium. Byzantium wasn’t perfect at all, but it was the pinnacle of Christianity, protecting the Faith with arms if necessary. It worked on the Orthodox Christian ideal of a “synfonia” between Church and State, working together to protect the Christian people committed to their care. This is what is happening in Russia today.

The Byzantine system wasn’t perfect, and neither is Russia’s. However Christian emperors have always had armies and have not shrunk from defending their borders. President Putin, his deputy Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet colleagues are determined not to let modern western atheistic licentiousness invade their country.

Prior to the outbreak of this “Ukrainian war,” the Ukraine was widely regarded as one of the most corrupt countries in the world and certainly the most corrupt in Europe.

Zelenskyy has long been in the direct pay of Ihor Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s second richest oligarch. Kolomoisky owned the notorious neo-nazi Azov battalions, it was his private army until it was absorbed, along with several other neo-Nazi groups, into the depleted Ukrainian army. Kolomoisky has been a top funder of the very Nazi Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests. It was these neo-Nazi battalions that were ordered to attack Donetsk-Luhansk at the beginning of the war (the order was intercepted by British, USA and Russian intelligence and included clear instructions to kill all civilians). That brought the ill-prepared Russian reservists in nearby Russia into the Ukraine to protect the Russian-culture people of the Donetsk-Luhansk region.

Zelenskyy is a professional actor, chosen by Ihor Kolomoisky to stand for president on the grounds that he can learn by heart and repeat convincingly, the speeches written for him by Denys Shmyhal, the unelected “Prime Minister” who is in the pay of Rinat Akhmetov, heir to the east Ukraine criminal gangs, (an ethnic Tartar and a Muslim) and the Ukraine’s richest oligarch.

The Pandora Papers contained 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 billionaires, celebrities, and business leaders including Volodomyr Zelenskyy. And the Panama Papers likewise released and gave details of political leader’s corruption.

Zelenskyy, who came to power on an anti-corruption campaign, is shown in these papers to be a billionaire, with most of his money held outside the Ukraine and therefore apparently guilty of tax evasion. Around $43,000,000 has been traced from the bank owned by Ihor Kolomoisky to Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s accounts.

The ongoing basically civil war that we see in Ukraine is merely the opening war in a series leading to a major war probably based in the Middle East. It has already triggered a major energy crisis, made much worse by the insanity of the idea that climate change can be reversed, massive worldwide food insecurity, a catastrophic break-down in global supply lines, and pretty well out-of-control inflation (though this latter has other inputs).

The now-visible globalist agenda being foisted on everyone by western corporations/governments has led to the beginnings of a reaction of nationalism which is fanning political instability in a number of western countries.

There is a danger of the world moving into warring blocs. Secularists will tell you that it’s all economic. This is a lie because they are quite unwilling to let go of the atheistic liberal cultural morass that the western world has descended into, which is a major component of Russia’s rejection of the west.

But why is America so invested in the Ukraine? Apart from baiting Russia and moving NATO closer to a non-threatening Russia? Let’s look at who owns what in America: Anti-war organisations point out that BlackRock is the largest investor in weapon manufacturers in the USA. It is also the largest investor in all forms and companies in the American media industry, and finally it is the largest investor in American big pharma companies.

BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the Big Three passive fund asset management firms. The third, State Street, is owned by BlackRock whose largest shareholder is Vanguard. So the three firms are fully intertwined with common board members. Their interlocking directorates connect the corporate media to the state, the Pentagon, defence and arms manufacturers the oil industry and big pharma. All done through BlackRock’s investments and ability to steer the major firms in these industries. BlackRock-Vanguard are expected to control $20 trillion in assets in a few years’ time ($15 trillion at present, 40% of the US gross domestic product).

To make it easy: BlackRock are the largest shareholders in US Media, Defence, Oil and big pharma. Defence companies make money out of war because hardware is used, destroyed and must be replaced. BlackRock wins. Media companies can direct the narrative to ensure the public is onside with a given war. BlackRock wins. Big pharma has installed dozens of dangerous medical laboratories in the west of Ukraine because it could “persuade” corrupt politicians to look the other way, which is partly why BlackRock want the US to defend Ukraine. BlackRock wins. There are decent oil reserves in the Ukraine and lots of coal. The oil companies, and former President Biden’s family, own some of that oil… unfortunately for them, Russia now controls a lot including Hunter Biden’s oil wells.

Fink’s former chief of staff at BlackRock, Adewale Adeyemo, was, until President Donald J. Trump’s election, deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Former BlackRock executive Brian Deese, was Biden’s top economic advisor; former BlackRock executive Michael Pyle served as chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

So they were not just into government, some observers think that BlackRock is in fact the shadow government of the USA, the very Deep State that President Trump speaks of time and again.

What has that got to do with us, for we are Christians are we not? Well, the basis for all this is in fact almost completely that of the spiritual-moral debasement of world-wide society and particularly so in the more powerful nations of the west.

This “moral revolution” so long in the making, but so recent in the application has radically changed the way many nations are going about governing their people and dealing amongst each other.

This moral degeneracy in the west has led rapidly re-Christianising Russia and the rest of the Orthodox Christian Slavic states to want to cut off the cultural inflow from the west. It has led to Russia seeking to stem the inflow from the Ukraine across their very ethnically porous border, and intervening militarily in the ongoing Ukrainian civil war.

What of Russia then? What drives her? Russia is re-Christianising at a phenomenol rate: 70 per cent of the population are now members of the Russian Orthodox Church with 110 million members, 368 bishops and about 40,000 priests and deacons. At the end of Communist rule in 1991, just 6,000 churches existed but now there are 36,000 – an average of three new places of worship built every day… and no government money involved. On top of that 5,877 seminarians are currently preparing for ordination.

This is what is unnerving for western secular-atheist politicians, media and influencers. This to them, is every bit as dangerous as was the communist Soviet Union to their predecessors. But unlike the Soviets, Christian Russia is primarily interested in securing her borders, not advancing them.

Secularist, globalist, liberal (and a lot of conservative) westerners have not the vaguest understanding of what is driving Russia. They only see it as “not democratic like we are equals evil”. They have no idea about the re-Christianising spread across Russia and insofar as it is brought to their notice, they dismiss it as irrelevant because of their own experience of the irrelevance of churches in the west.

They do not understand that the Orthodox Church in Orthodox countries is very different from their experience of churches in the west. Russia was for a thousand years an intensely religious nation. It was universally Orthodox Church; there was no other – no protestants, no Roman Catholics, just the Orthodox Church, in a state run by a Tsar and his council of ministers all of whom were active members of the Church.

Russia hasn’t got back there yet, but it is well on the way. The Orthodox Church, in Orthodox countries, seeks (but doesn’t always succeed) to work cooperatively with the government. It is called in Orthodoxy “symphonia”. The present Russian government has an elected parliament of a number of distinct political parties. The present President, his deputy and a significant number of the ministers are practising members of the Orthodox Church.

What western observers and reporters deliberately fail to report is that constitutionally the Russian President is not part of the government. Take for instance, the conduct of the war in the Ukraine: President Putin cannot take decisions alone, he must work with the General Staff. The Russian General Staff, unlike in the west, is a specific college of very senior officers apart from the field officers who run the army, airforce and navy. Its members are very carefully chosen and trained, and they operate as a college, with whom the President must confer, and who will guide the conduct of any war. In fact, President Putin, is not driving the war forward, he is the one putting his foot on the brake pedal and holding the General Staff back, we know that from internal leaks.

All countries in the past that claimed to be Christian, have had armies to defend their borders. All have moved into neighbouring countries if they perceived a threat to their people or way of life. That has been the pattern for two thousand years. So getting one’s protestant or protestantised or vaguely half-remembered Christian knickers in a twist about Russia intervening in the Ukraine when they clearly saw Ukraine embracing western sludge-culture and threatening genocide to the Ukrainian Russian culture citizens in two of their provinces, is just hypocrisy, nothing more.

Russia has reclaimed a fair part of her historical territory and nothing will make her retreat now. The idea of her retreating is just a pipe dream of those who smoke interesting stuff.

What about President Putin personally? For many years Putin has had a close relationship with Archimandrite Tikhon, the Father Superior of Sretensky monastery. Fr Tikhon, with a reputation as a spiritual healer, served as confessor to Putin. Fr Tikhon has reported in the past that Putin prays daily in a small chapel next to the presidential office. Putin’s mother and ex–wife were both certainly religious. As an overall picture, we can at the very least see that Putin is a man with a committed personal faith.

Vladimir Putin’s close associate, Dmitry Medvedev is also an Orthodox believer, having converted during the communist period, when it was dangerous to do so.

To understand Russia, it is necessary to understand the great Byzantine Empire, for that is Putin’s model. The Byzantine Empire worked on the “symphonia” of Church and State, where both worked in harmony.

If you want to understand Putin, study the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. Despite near-constant warfare, Basil distinguished himself as an administrator, reducing the power of the great land-owning families who dominated the Empire’s administration and military, filled its treasury, and left it with its greatest expanse of treasure in four centuries. The Christian Byzantine Empire was not afraid to go to war to preserve its Christian heritage and its territory, it maintained a powerful army – as indeed, have other Christian empires, not least the British Empire.

The Church, for Putin, has a significant and powerful value in forging a strong Russian state. The Church serves a powerful role in supporting Putin’s true political ideology – his identity as an advocate of a strong Christian state. The “Russian Idea,” as described by Putin in his ‘Millennium Message’, delivered in 1999 and still seen as the core of his political model, includes patriotism, collectivism, solidarity and destiny to be a great power.

Read Josh. 11:1-5 and Deuteronomy 20:16-18; these biblical verses will explain a lot, because the genuine Christian Church reads the Old Testament too. So from that it seems that the People of God are required to defend themselves against such total moral degeneracy, by very strong means.

While others have broken away from the Orthodox Church over the centuries, it remains today hundreds of millions strong. Orthodox Christians today are spread all over the globe, but where is that Church strongest? Russia, Serbia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria and the minor slavic nations as well as Greece. Which country is foremost among these? Russia is, it is the largest and has the majority of Orthodox Believers.

The origins of the Russian Orthodox Church date to AD 988. That’s when Vladimir I, the ruler of Kievan Rus’ with its capital of Kiev, which included current-day Ukraine and Russia, the ancient Russian state, converted to Orthodox Christianity and his country with him. The Orthodox Church was at that time, the single Church in the world – the Church that Christ the Anointed founded with His Apostles.

So today, for most of the Orthodox world, Russia is the standard-bearer, the people with the destiny of being the last bastion and defender of Orthodox Christianity in an increasingly self-destructive, evil, anti-Christian world.

You can deride the Orthodox Christianity of Russia and her prophesied destiny all you want, but the fact is that is what is at the core of Russia today; that and her determination to regain her historic territory of Kievan Rus and thereby defend her borders and close them to the filth of western sewer culture.

Forget The Guardian’s delusions, gentle reader, just watch how the western sanctions have failed, how the Russian economy is bounding ahead and how Russia has built the BRICS worldwide financial-trade organisation which is bringing to a halt the American BlackRock dollar dominance.

Real, red blooded Christianity of the LORD of the Old Testament, who is the Anointed of the New Testament, will prevail. America and the degenerate west with its non-Christian allies, may yet drag us into a world war based in the middle east, but that will not be the end, not quite.

George Christensen is a former Australian politician, a Christian, freedom lover, conservative, blogger, podcaster, journalist and theologian. He has been feted by the Epoch Times as a “champion of human rights” and his writings have been praised by Infowars’ Alex Jones as “excellent and informative”.

George believes Nation First will be an essential part of the ongoing fight for freedom:

“The time is now for every proud patriot to step to the fore and fight for our freedom, sovereignty and way of life. Information is a key tool in any battle and the Nation First newsletter will be a valuable tool in the battle for the future of the West.”
— George Christensen.

Find more about George at his www.georgechristensen.com.au website.