Putin and the Apocalypse

During last October’s Valdai Discussion Club, Putin’s rhetoric became even more dramatic. “Russia would be the victim,” and “the aggressor should know that revenge is inevitable.” While nuclear war would be a “world catastrophe,” he said, at least Russians would “go to heaven,” as “martyrs,” whereas, lacking any “time to repent,” the aggressors “would just croak.”

Putin’s apocalyptic rhetoric resonates among his supporters. For example, Alexander Prokhanov, an ultra-nationalist writer who has likened Putin to a messiah, declared that, with “the possibility of nuclear war” seeming to “preoccupy the minds of world rulers,” many participants of the Valdai Discussion Club re-read the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, “upon returning home.”