Eurasia Press & News
“When you hear that the fleet is sailing in the Mediterranean, know that the Constantinople issue will soon be resolved.”
St. Cosmas of Aitolia
Continental War: Hot Stage
In a sense, the war is already underway. There is always war. The war that is most important now is the confrontation between two civilizations – the civilization of the Land, represented by Russia, and the civilization of the Sea, embodied in the United States. On the spiritual level, it is a battle between spirit and matter, light and darkness, God and the devil.
The confrontation between the poles of reality – between good and evil, the trading system and heroic civilization, between Carthage and Rome, Athens and Sparta is irremovable. But at some point it reaches a hot stage. Today is just such a moment.
We are balancing on the brink of the war that exists. But which at any moment can become the main and, probably, the only content of our life. Since the main players – the USA and Russia – are powers possessing nuclear weapons, this war concerns all the peoples of the earth. It has the potential to be the end of humanity. Of course, this is not yet fatal, but such a turn of events cannot be ruled out.
The spiritual plan of the great confrontation is conceptualized in special terms and in a special context. And here the balance of power is always in favor of the Light, regardless of the position of the faithful. But at the strategic level, things may look a little different.
The roles in this war are not symmetrical. Russia is in a weaker position, but is trying to return to the status of a global player. It simply seeks to regain its potential as a regional power with free control over the area immediately adjacent to its borders. But this is also unacceptable for the United States, which, despite everything, remains the global hegemon and is not going to voluntarily give up unipolarity.
If we take into account what the spiritual background of this war is, it will become clear: darkness does not allow the presence of light in any proportion; it will calm down only when it manages to overcome light everywhere – not only globally, but also locally, because one ray is enough to make darkness is darkness, without him she can pretend to be anything.
Hence an important conclusion: the global claims of the modern materialist technocratic West, globalism itself, is not an accident, but the essence of the force with which we are dealing. It is naive to believe that you can come to an agreement with the devil or deceive him. You can only defeat him. This is the law of spiritual warfare.
Today he is advancing, and we are retreating. Therefore, the war is unfolding practically on our territory – in the zone of our direct national interests. Despite the fact that Russia today is trying to go beyond its borders, this war is defensive for us.
At the moment, we do not set ourselves any goals other than regional ones. However, their implementation is hampered by a world nuclear power. This complicates the situation and takes the conflict to a global level. In any case: we are attacked, we defend ourselves. It is important.
Let us now consider the fronts of this war.
Front No. 1. Syria
From the very beginning of the Syrian conflict, Moscow supported Bashar al-Assad, against whom Washington, Western Europe and the Middle Eastern proxies of the United States – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – played; each of these countries, however, pursued its own personal interests.
Radical Islamic groups – ISIS, Al-Qaeda (Al-Nusra Front), etc. – became the instrument for overthrowing Assad. However, Russia became fully involved in the military operation only in 2015, when it provided serious and open military support to the weakened Assad.
In this situation, Moscow received allies in the form of the Shiite axis – Tehran-Shiite Iraq-Lebanese Hezbollah, with whom we not only cooperate, but fight side by side. The Shiite world is strictly anti-American, but at the same time, at the regional level, it opposes the radical Sunnism of the Saudis and Qatar, which sponsor Salafi extremist groups.
On Front No. 1, Russia faces the United States and NATO countries not directly, but indirectly. Western countries themselves are also verbally fighting ISIS, although in fact they are in every possible way supporting radical Islamic groups to overthrow Assad. The same tactics were used to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. In addition, the presence of Salafi jihadists in Iraq, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan, justifies the presence of American troops there.
Therefore, Front No. 1 represents a vital challenge for Russia: the USA and NATO are indirectly fighting against us, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are almost openly fighting against us. Therefore, the war in Syria cannot in any way be considered an ordinary anti-terrorist operation: in addition to the fact that the Salafis now control most of Syria, they have enormous direct and indirect support.
But Russia is a nuclear power. Therefore, its involvement in the Syrian war dramatically changes the situation, taking it from the local to the global level. Since we got involved there, it means we put a lot at stake. And now it’s not just about Assad, his enemies will be forced to fight with Russia. But the opposite is also true: we challenged not the extremist network of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, but American hegemony and Middle Eastern Salafism, which has serious bases in the richest petrodollar monarchies of the Gulf.
What is important here is how much Moscow understands the seriousness of the situation on Front No. 1 and how far we are ready to go in a situation that is already a real full-fledged tough war with an impressive coalition on the opposite side of the front. After all, the USA and NATO are exactly there, no matter what they proclaim.
Front #2. Turkey
As we were drawn into the Syrian war, according to objective laws, we encountered Turkey, which essentially occupied the northern territories of Syria, inhabited by Turkoman tribes, and entered into a military conflict with the Syrian Kurds. Erdogan long ago established an alliance with the richest Qatar, which finances Salafi groups (such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) and began an active struggle against Assad.
Therefore, when the Russian military in Syria began bombing Salafist positions in Northern Syria, we came into direct conflict with Ankara. The downing of a military plane and the brutally murdered Russian pilot were only a pretext for escalation. When we began to act decisively, and having gotten involved in the conflict we simply could not do otherwise, war with Turkey became a very real prospect.
This was followed by a severance of trade relations, a ban on tourism and the expulsion of Turkish construction companies, which from an economic point of view became a severe painful blow to Turkey and led to multi-billion dollar losses.
Ankara constantly threatens to close the Bosphorus to Russian ships, and this is tantamount to cutting the lifeline for our contingent in Latakia. In recent weeks, the Turks have transferred a significant part of their troops from the border with Greece to the border with Syria, which can be regarded as preparation for a military invasion. All this greatly increases the risk of a new Russian-Turkish war.
How likely is it?
More likely than ever in the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. Front No. 2 is already open.
No one can say for sure when it will burst into flames. Theoretically – at any moment. Here again it is worth remembering that Turkey is a NATO member and that it is one way or another coordinating its actions on Syria with Washington. This means that in a possible war with Russia, on Turkey’s side – as in the era of the Crimean War – a broad Western coalition led by the United States will again stand. Therefore, again: a regional conflict will certainly have a global scale. Moreover, there is an American military base with nuclear weapons located on Turkish territory. The war with Turkey can hardly help but develop into the Third World War.
Front No. 3. Ukraine
No one in the world recognized reunification with Crimea.
The DPR and LPR remain a bleeding wound with an unknown status.
Poroshenko’s position in Kyiv is quite shaky, and it is generally impossible, even theoretically, to radically correct the economic and social situation in Ukraine. Therefore, at a certain point, Kyiv will have only one option left – a new round of escalation of tension in the East and even an invasion of Crimea.
If Ukraine in this situation were alone with Russia, it would be suicide for Kyiv.
But again the US and NATO factor should be taken into account. It is the West that is behind the coup in Kyiv in the winter of 2014. And at some point, a consolidated attack on the positions of the Novorossiya militia and even on Crimea from the Ukrainian army may be quite likely. And for internal Ukrainian reasons, and even more so according to the logic of the global confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Please note: all three Fronts are located in close proximity to our borders in the zone separating Eurasia and Russia, the continental space of the Eurasian Heartland, from the western territories. This is the area where civilizations, East and West, converge.
As a rule, because of disputes over precisely such territories, world wars and global conflicts began. All three Fronts are located in the space of the former Ottoman Empire, because it was from the Turks that we conquered both New Russia and Crimea, and it was the Ottoman Empire that once included Syria. Previously, this was the space of the Orthodox-Byzantine world. So these three Fronts have a huge historical and civilizational meaning.
Now let’s turn to Russia’s internal problems. Here we see three more Fronts.
Front No. 4. Salafi terrorism inside Russia
Network structures of radical Islam, tied to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have long been deployed in Russia itself – both in the North Caucasus and in other areas. As the influx of Islamic population into large Russian cities and the capital grows, these networks are spreading everywhere and entangling to varying degrees the entire space of Russia. They are not limited only to the area of compact Muslim residence, but are actively expanding their zone of influence in other social environments.
Taking advantage of many internal problems, radical Sunni Islam is gradually becoming quite popular as an alternative to the vague and sluggish ideological agenda of official Moscow and its purely conformist representatives in the regions. This creates a breeding ground for the training and education of terrorist groups and direct affiliates of ISIS (a terrorist group banned in the Russian Federation).
If technically the special services more or less cope with the task of containing these groups, then a strategic plan, and even more so an ideological program for combating these phenomena, is completely absent, which will eventually make
Front No. 4 is extremely relevant. This Front No. 4 was actually the field of a hot war during the First and Second Chechen companies; a turning point in the Second of them was achieved only by turning to a strictly patriotic line in domestic politics. any weakening of such a national discourse automatically again strengthens centrifugal currents and extremist groups.
Front No. 4 is open and operating, although we do not fully know the scale of the problem: in order not to spread panic among the population, the special services hide from people the number of prevented terrorist attacks and other preventive measures, which, in fact, is impressive even today.
Since behind this Front No. 4 are the United States and external centers, American proxies in the Middle East, here too we can expect serious financial and, most importantly, logistical support for a new escalation.
Front No. 5. Fifth Column
This Front is a network of opposition circles, whose core consists of pro-American liberals who dream of returning to the 1990s, the era of open robbery of Russia and the sale of all its assets abroad, as well as the omnipotence of liberal elites, and whose cannon fodder are radical nationalists and Russian neo-Nazis, dissatisfied with the Russian government and its passive policy towards growing migration, as well as the vagueness or complete absence of a national idea.
Liberals alone are not enough to organize meaningful and large-scale protests, so radical Russian nationalists perform mass support functions in this 5th column coalition. But it is the pro-American liberals who are the main center where coordination efforts and major decisions are made, responsible for contacts with Washington.
The United States itself officially supports “democratic” movements, allocating significant sums from the budget to them. But funding from other, less transparent sources of the Russian fifth column is many times greater than the data that is publicly announced. On Bolotnaya Square in the spring of 2012, the fifth column showed what it is capable of.
If the situation escalates and in the face of the consequences of sanctions and possible military conflicts, Front No. 5 could become a significant factor in weakening Russia. This impending stab in the back may prove decisive if the inefficiency of the administrative system (and nothing in Russia predicts that it will become more efficient in the near future) accumulates costs. Under certain circumstances, some of the irritated and disappointed ordinary people may join Front No. 5, which will create a serious threat.
Front No. 6. Pro-Western agents of influence and liberals in power
This group has recently been called the “sixth column”. We are talking about those liberals and Westerners who integrated into power in the 2000s or have remained there since the 1990s, having accepted the new rules of the game.
Unlike the fifth column, representatives of the sixth column are formally completely loyal to the authorities, obey them unquestioningly and act in a spirit of complete conformism.
However, the sixth column shares the Western view of things, sees the USA and NATO as the vanguard of progressive humanity, and is guided exclusively by liberal methods and approaches in the economy.
Often the fortunes and families of top Russian officials are also in the West.
In such a situation, loyalty and forced hypocritical patriotism hide an orientation toward the consistent sabotage of state sovereignty, containment of sovereign ideology, and the implementation of economic, administrative and information strategies that ultimately lead to demoralization of society, weakening of the economy and further de-ideologization of the population.
Front No. 6 consists of a systematic, conscious and extremely skillful sabotage of the Russian revival, containment and substitution of truly patriotic reforms, the creation of skillful simulacra and fakes.
The “sixth column” in its views is no different from the fifth and is also oriented towards the West, but only hides it, preferring to strike at the regime from the inside rather than from the outside. And just like the fifth column, the sixth column is controlled from an external center, from Washington, although this happens in a more subtle and nuanced manner than in the case of the “fifth column”.
Front No. 6 is coordinated by the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), whose structures are almost officially represented at the highest levels of Russian government. In general, most of the “government liberals”, as well as a significant segment of other government institutions, belong to this type.
Synchronizing fronts: Washington’s likely strategy
Now let’s put ourselves in the shoes of American strategists.
The escalation of US and NATO relations with Russia is obvious. Moscow behaves in the case of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, with Crimea and Novorossiya in 2014 and, finally, with Syria in 2015 as a sovereign regional power, if necessary, forcefully insisting on its national interests in a strictly defined zone.
This is incompatible with the continuation of American hegemony, which is still global. Moscow would have to build its policy in agreement with Washington and NATO, and naturally, it would never receive sanctions for all of the above actions.
This means that, despite outward politeness and liberal rhetoric, Russia is leaving the control of the West. It is a fact. And Washington must somehow respond to this fact.
If he admits this, it will be tantamount to a renunciation of hegemony. But having begun to collapse, the American Empire will not necessarily stop at those borders that it still confidently controls today.
Encouraged by the Russians’ successes, anyone may want to test the Americans’ strength.
Therefore, in the place of Washington strategists, it would be logical to activate all 6 Fronts. Moreover, in all six cases, America will not act with its own hands: even the worst outcome will not deal it a mortal blow, since it is reliably protected by a huge European, North African zone, beyond which is the Atlantic, and from the East – the Pacific Ocean (especially that there are no active movements from Russia in the eastern direction).
Moreover, it would be quite reasonable to synchronize attacks on Russia from all sides – in Syria from militants, to support Turkey, to push the Kiev punitive forces to a new wave of hostilities (and an attack on Crimea), to put on alert the domestic Russian terrorist structures of radical Salafists, again support the fifth column (by finding a suitable social reason) and deliver another sanctions ultimatum to the “sixth column” so that they engage in sabotage more actively and painfully.
At the same time, from the outside it would be just as logical, on the one hand, to maintain and even strengthen sanctions, lower oil prices by some percentage, and at the same time begin to attack the Russian leadership with conciliatory trolling in the spirit of the CFR – they say, “The West will help you “,” “terrorists are our common problem” (common because they fight with them, and others arm them) and “the main problem is China” (“let the Russians give up their nuclear weapons, and we will supply them with ours to protect them from the Chinese “) etc.
But behind these simple analytical calculations something very serious is hidden. War. A real hot war with a sea of blood, conflagration, torture, suffering and pain. A war in which we all will have to participate. And since three of the six Fronts are internal, it is likely that the external war will be accompanied by a civil war. Which, however, we know very well from our history.
Winning Strategy: The Enemy Within
Let’s imagine that we have fairly objectively assessed and weighed the risks and that our analysis is correct. What to do in such a situation? When entering a war, or at least approaching a war closely, we must not only react situationally, but also have some kind of plan – both for fighting and winning. Wanting victory is quite logical, isn’t it? All that remains is to think through ways to achieve it. Even in purely theoretical terms.
It is quite obvious that it is possible to effectively wage war against an external enemy only if society is sufficiently consolidated and mobilized internally. It is desirable that it be morally prepared for war. To do this, it must understand who is the enemy and who is the friend, and most importantly, why this is so and not otherwise. You cannot begin to demonize the enemy at the moment hostilities begin. The image of the enemy must be formed in advance and knowingly.
Therefore, the first task of preparing for victory would be a real full-fledged campaign to create a completely negative, monstrous, satanic (that is, true) image of the USA and the West as a whole.
It’s time to call a spade a spade. The West is where the devil has fallen. This is the center of the global capitalist octopus. This is the matrix of a rotten culture of perversion and vice, lies and cynicism, violence and hypocrisy.
To some extent, this is already happening in modern Russia, but since this matter is entrusted to the “sixth column,” instead of revealing the true demonic essence of the modern West, we have a caricature, something pitiful and unconvincing. This reflects the sabotage that is the essence of Front No. 6. Its fighters do not refuse to carry out orders from the authorities, they even ask for more and more, but they turn their execution into a farce, dumbing down and subtly discrediting all undertakings.
Clumsy and insincere propaganda, which is not believed by those who make it, often has the opposite effect.
Therefore, it would be logical to entrust the formation of the image of the American enemy and his satellites (with whom we actually have to fight) to those who think exactly this way, who understand the Satanism of the West and who are able to convey this with maximum clarity and persuasiveness to the sleeping masses.
In the meantime, the West is tasked with criticizing the agents of influence of the West itself. With predictable results. This approach to matters is incompatible with a “victory strategy” and needs to be reconsidered (if we want to have any chance of winning the coming war).
The next logically follows from the first point. It is necessary to dismantle the structures of the “sixth column” as soon as possible, removing liberals and Westerners from all key posts. Along with them, liberalism in the economy will be abolished, which will allow:
establish national control over the Central Bank,
abandon the dollar by switching to another reserve currency in foreign trade activities (for example, the yuan),
achieve full financial sovereignty,
move to a mobilization economy according to the logic of wartime conditions.
In parallel, it is necessary to form a National Media Committee, which will reorganize information work in accordance with emergency requirements.
The effectiveness of the purely destructive activities of the “fifth column” is largely related to the effectiveness of the sabotage of the “sixth column”. Front No. 5 and Front No. 6 are inextricably linked. Therefore, the dismantling of the sixth column within the government will sharply weaken the “fifth column,” whose leaders in emergency conditions could either be interned (by the way, house arrest measures for individual leaders are already being applied) or expelled.
Of course, any legal means of disseminating liberal or destructive nationalist propaganda should be outlawed.
Front No. 4 is a problem due to the absence of any ethno-national policy in the State. At the moment, this issue is being occupied by the same “sixth column”, or cognitively inadequate bureaucrats. That is why the bureaucrats get rid of real challenges from uncontrolled migration and interethnic and interfaith tensions with meaningless and empty slogans about “civil society” and “tolerance” in our conditions.
Without a coherent system of ethno-national strategy, the issue of Islamic extremism and terrorism in Russia cannot be resolved. Forceful measures alone are not enough; it is necessary to abolish or irreversibly change the social environment itself. Force operations to combat terrorist fundamentalism must be correlated with a large-scale – including ideological – model of ethno-national politics.
Winning Strategy: External Enemy
In Ukraine – Front No. 3 – one should be prepared for armed provocations from Kyiv and give them an adequate rebuff. Sooner or later, Russia will have to radically resolve the issue with Novorossiya, since it is somewhat irresponsible to hope that Kyiv will fall on its own or abandon its pro-American and anti-Russian policy.
To effectively defend Crimea and resolve the issue with Donbass, it is necessary to liberate the entire space of Novorossiya, and if war is inevitable, Moscow will have only one task – to win it as quickly and as effectively as possible. The creation of a Russia-friendly zone from Odessa to Kharkov – either as a separate State, or with the inclusion of these original Russian lands into Russia – is the goal, the achievement of which could be considered a victory. No less important is the fate of Central Ukraine.
For Russian self-awareness, Kyiv is the pole of historical existence. Despite the fact that representatives of the pro-Western oligarchic elite, based on the Russophobic ideology of the Westerners, temporarily gained a foothold in it, Kyiv is an integral part of the Russian world. We cannot stand for the truth and leave it to the enemy. He must be released and returned to the people.
The fate of Western Ukraine without the East and Kyiv will no longer matter much. These lands fell away from the Russian world too long ago, and we can hardly hope to soon return them to the context of Orthodox civilization. However, the greater our successes in the struggle for the Russian world, the greater the chances that the situation will change in the western regions of Ukraine.
Turkish Front No. 2. Here, in addition to the development of military operations, which are the task of the country’s military leadership and cannot be the work of analysts, attention should be paid to two main factors: the political opposition to the Erdogan regime, which in the current conditions is becoming a natural ally of Russia, and the fundamental problem that for Ankara they are the Kurds.
Both factors are the key to success in the Russian-Turkish conflict. It is necessary to conduct anti-Turkish propaganda in Russian society extremely carefully, constantly emphasizing that the United States and its accomplice Erdogan are responsible for the escalation of relations, and that the Turks are not considered by Moscow as a historical enemy.
Therefore, any parallels with the Russian-Turkish wars – even for internal use – will only rally the Turks around Erdogan and strengthen the enemy. And on the contrary, an outstretched hand of friendship to those Turkish politicians who do not share the views of Erodoğan and the neo-Ottomanism of Davut Oğlu could be decisive. At the same time, of course, interaction with the Kurds should be intensified, since they are an impressive force in Turkey itself.
And finally, Front No. 1 – Syria. It is no coincidence that we put it at the end of the “winning strategy”. The most acute form of confrontation is always the most practical and filled with technical and military details. But everything private always depends on society, and local successes depend on external – often global – conditions.
We saw that here we have an important regional ally – the Shiite world, represented primarily by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah. These are our brothers in arms, and we must deepen this alliance in every possible way. It is important to support the Shiites in Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia itself. It is obvious that we are not the only ones who understand the full significance of the Russian-Shiite strategic alliance, and therefore pro-American forces both in Russia and in Iran itself will try to do everything possible to sow discord between the allies. This should be nipped in the bud – at least in Russia, and by directly dotting the i’s on this issue in negotiations with the Shiites.
Further, we need political, and preferably military and economic support from the countries that are members of the planned multipolar club – BRICS. China plays a special role here, preferring not to take the first line in the confrontation with the United States, but ready to support Moscow in it, remaining in a secondary role. A lot in Syria now depends on relations between Moscow and Beijing, and maximum attention should be paid to this. Moreover, China is beginning to act more actively in the military-strategic field on the African continent, starting to create the first military bases there.
We have no chance of making European countries our full-fledged allies in Syria: the US influence on them is too strong. But Moscow will benefit from any distancing of the European powers (primarily France, Germany and Italy) from Washington and disagreements in NATO. If the wave of right-wing conservative parties and movements, generally loyal to Russia, continues to grow in Europe, this will significantly strengthen our positions in Syria itself. Russian propaganda in Europe in wartime conditions takes on special significance.
Since in Syria we are faced with forces that are openly supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, especially since Qatar was involved in the explosion of a plane with Russian tourists over the Sinai, we should pay special attention to the maximum destabilization of the respective regimes.
Under certain circumstances, direct strikes against Qatar and military support for the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the Shiites in Bahrain, cannot be ruled out. The invitation of Russian troops by the governments of Iraq and Lebanon could be strategically decisive; this will make it possible to launch a full-scale war against the main bases of Islamic terrorists ISIS and cut off their infrastructure ties with Turkey and the Gulf countries.
In general, Russia is already at war in the Middle East, so it is necessary to recognize this as a fait accompli and urgently revive the entire arsenal of available means – primarily intellectual and network ones, aimed at promoting Russian interests in this region in various ways – in the field of information , economics, ideology, etc.
The last argument in this war will be the presence of nuclear weapons, which, thank God, liberal reformers did not manage to destroy in the 90s. The point is to never use it. But this means that it imposes severe restrictions on our main enemy – the United States of America. Under pain of complete destruction, the United States will be obliged to play against us according to certain rules.
Front No. 7. Americans against the Federal Government
In addition, Front No. 7 should be opened in relation to the United States. The point is that in the United States itself there are many dissatisfied with the rule of the elite that professes globalist ideology, drags the United States into bloody wars, and destroys traditional European Christian identity.
The New America, in which there is nothing truly American left and which serves the interests of the global financial oligarchy, which has neither culture nor identity, is destroying Old America.
Therefore, supporting American traditionalism and conservatism, and American identity is an important task for Russia. Our ally in the United States is the American people. In addition, many contradictions have accumulated in the social sphere and in interethnic relations. A significant part of American society does not accept complete moral degeneration. The federal government is using every opportunity to begin the process of repealing the Second Amendment, which allows Americans to bear arms.
The ever-growing Latin population, predominantly Catholic, is introducing a new identity into American society that is not at all hostile to Russia. Russia must actively engage in the struggle for influence on American society, strengthen the explanation of Russia’s spiritual position in this war, show that Russians and Americans have a common enemy – a maniacal satanic elite that has usurped power and is leading all of humanity – including the Americans themselves – to inevitable disaster.
The fruits of the deeds of this elite are obvious – the entire Middle East is already covered in blood, no longer coping with the establishment of any kind of order, the globalist elite (CFR, neocons, representatives of the global financial oligarchy, Wall Street) is spreading only chaos, devastation, death everywhere and pain. The destruction of this cancer of humanity is the work of all of us, including the Americans themselves, who are not only its instruments, but also its victims.
Where is the City?
Winning this game will not be easy. Because the name of this game is Big War. But nevertheless, when the Great War came, it can only be avoided at the cost of slavery and deliberately admitting oneself as a loser. This has never happened in Russian history. No matter how difficult it was for us, we managed every time.
This is not just about geopolitical confrontation, about the redistribution of spheres of influence or about ensuring national interests. We are talking about something much deeper and more important.
All religions have a section dedicated to the end of times and the final battle. Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, associate the events of this cycle with the Great War. Moreover, invariably in all these three religions, the place of this Great War is the Middle East, the field of Armageddon, as well as the adjacent territories. For Muslims, Damascus – the Umayyad Mosque – is considered the place where the Second Coming of Christ will take place.
Therefore, the war in Syria has a frankly eschatological meaning.
After all, Syria is part of the Holy Land on which the Savior set foot. For Jews awaiting the imminent arrival of Moshiach, the escalation of violence on their borders in areas critical to the very existence of the State of Israel also cannot but have eschatological significance.
American Protestant dispensationalists see the Last Battle scenario as an invasion of the army of the northern country of Gog (interpreted as Russia) into the Holy Land. And finally, Athonite monks and Greek saints – such as Cosmas the Aeolian [ 1] or Elder Paisius the Holy Mountain – repeatedly predicted the liberation of Constantinople by Russian troops and the collapse of Turkey. Thus, Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia in Faras told believers that they would lose their fatherland, but would soon find it again” [2 ] : “There will be another foreign army. She will not know Greek, but will believe in Christ. They will also ask: where is the City? This was clearly understood as an indication of the Russian army approaching Constantinople. In one of the conversations, Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets said:
“Know that Türkiye will also fall apart. There will be a war that will last two halves. We will be winners because we are Orthodox.
- Geronda, will we suffer damage in the war? Eh, at most, they will occupy one or two islands, and Constantinople will be given to us. You’ll see, you’ll see! [3]
Just recently, one or two years ago, all these predictions would have caused only a bewildered shrug of the shoulders – fairy tales. But… today: a lot of blood is being shed throughout the Middle East; There is fighting around Damascus; Russians are not just present, but are fighting in the Holy Land; the conflict with Turkey is flaring up and it cannot be ruled out that this will lead to a real war. From the point of view of eschatology, the time is coming to return our shrines – the Holy Land, Constantinople, Kyiv. The statement that we are not living in the “End Times” today looks unscientific. As Elder Paisios said, “You will see, you will see!” And we’ll see.
So where is the City?
1 Athanasius Zoitakis. Life and prophecies of Cosmas of Aetolia. M., 2007.
2 Christodoulos Agioreitis, hieromonk. Election Dish. Mount Athos, 1996.
3 . Athanasius Rakovalis “Father Paisios told me…”. M., 2003.
