June 22, 2025: Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 there have been some interesting changes inside Russia. One of them has been the rapid growth of a Russian nationalist organization called The Russian Community/TRC. This was mandated and made possible by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who needed a powerful nationalist organization to support his unpopular decisions, like the war in Ukraine. Putin is also protecting his wartime ally the Russian Orthodox Church. The Putin-backed TRC quickly evolved from a nationalist group to one that supports Putin against all internal enemies, real or perceived. This appealed to returning veterans of the Ukraine War, who felt slighted and unappreciated. Many disillusioned veterans turned to anti-social behavior or outright crime. Putin seeks to mobilize that anger with his TRC and use it to physically attack Russians who openly oppose the war. TRC also attacks political parties that oppose Putin and supports those who back him. TRC also supports the many Slavic Russians who despise and mistrust ethnic and religious minorities in Russia, notably Muslim ones. The government assists by ignoring TRC crimes and insisting such misbehavior is actually carried out by unidentified enemies of Russia.

This TRC violence began in rural communities, which Russian media generally does not cover in much depth. Over the last year the TRC violence moved to the major cities where Russian media had to pay attention. Government-controlled media blamed unnamed anti-government groups for the violence. The Russian FSB, similar to the American FBI, began investigating everyone except the TRC to find out who was behind this unseemly violence. Putin was an officer in the KGB, the FSB’s predecessor, during the Cold War.

The TRC not only gives Putin a way to keep domestic critics and anti-war groups in line, it also ensures that angry, resentful return veterans of the Ukraine War blame anyone but the man who started the war, Vladimir Putin. This also gets Putin absolved of his failure to rehabilitate Ukraine War veterans. This works for now, but in the long term TRC will be considered another Putin war crime.

Vladimir Putin has also sought to forge a useful relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church became obvious in 2010 when he announced that the Russian Orthodox Church would provide priests to be military chaplains. While the Orthodox church agreed in the 1990s to provide religious services to military personnel and their families, this did not include chaplains. That's because, despite the shortage of priests, it was possible to use lay people to provide some priestly functions like counseling and organizing charitable activities. Chaplains, on the other hand, are typically assigned to military units, like other specialists including doctors and staff officers. There were not enough priests for that, because the communists had limited the number of men who could become priests during the 1921-91 Soviet period. But the church worked out a compromise with the military, and chaplains were phased in as priests became available.

Chaplains were first eliminated in the early 1920s, when the Russian civil war ended, with the victory of the communists. The chaplains were then replaced with political officers known as Zampolits (called commissars outside Russia), who served many of the same functions as a chaplain. Zampolits looked after morale and the maintenance of correct thinking. But the 2010 effort to bring back chaplains was part of an effort to stamp out the custom of older troops hazing and exploiting younger ones.

This hazing developed after World War II, when Russia deliberately avoided developing a professional NCO corps. They preferred to have officers take care of nearly all troop supervision. The NCOs that did exist were treated as slightly more reliable enlisted men, but given little real authority. Since officers did not live with the men, slack discipline in the barracks gave rise to the vicious hazing and exploitation of junior conscripts by the senior ones. This led to very low morale, and a lot of suicides, theft, sabotage and desertions. Long recognized as a problem, no solution ever worked. But getting rid of conscripts was believed to be a good first step. Volunteers served for more than two years, and Russia had been developing professional NCOs to keep things under control in the barracks. However, it's been found that even among volunteers, the hazing tends to survive. While the new NCOs have had some success in suppressing the hazing, the generals don't want to take any chances. Thus the attempt to bring back chaplains.

There is, however, a problem. In the military, a third of the troops don't believe in religion at all, and nearly 20 percent of those who do are not Russian Orthodox. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church actively opposes other religions trying to get established in Russia. The government got involved, passing laws that, in effect, outlaw some foreign religions. There's also hostility towards Roman Catholics. There aren't many of them, but the Russian Orthodox Church is still sparring with the Roman Catholics over a thousand year old dispute that split the Christian church into Roman and Orthodox branches. So there is fear that the Orthodox Church will want control over the new Chaplains Corps, and impose restrictions on chaplains belonging to other religions. There is also fear that a Chaplains Corps dominated by Russian Orthodox clergy could lead to trouble for troops who belong to other religions that the Russian Orthodox do not believe should be in Russia, like Pentecostals and Mormons. Under the new agreement, all these potential problems are to be solved, somehow, in the future.