NATO’s secretary-general has condemned North Korea’s decision to deploy troops to Russia, calling it a “huge escalation” that further draws North Korea into “Russia’s illegal war.” He also emphasized that this move represents a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict and yet another violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s reliance on soldiers from a staunchly anti-religious regime highlights a contradiction in his stated motives for the invasion. Though he has framed the war as a defense of Russian civilization and the Russian Orthodox Church against Western influences, his enlistment of North Korean forces reveals the superficiality of these claims.
Vladimir Putin delivers a speech, underscoring his stance against Western influences in the ongoing conflict
This latest development dispels any notion that Russia’s religious rationale for the war is genuine. The Moscow Patriarchate’s attempts to present the invasion as a “holy war” are now shown to be a facade.
With this clarification, Ukraine’s allies should seize the moment to impose consistent and meaningful sanctions on church leaders and related institutions that continue to support Russia’s illegal actions.
For Putin, positioning the war as a moral crusade against Western ultraliberalism has been central to Russia’s narrative. Just three days before launching the invasion in 2022, he declared that Ukraine is an “inalienable part” of Russia, stressing that the people there have always identified as “Russians and Orthodox Christians.”
Putin accused Ukraine of undermining this cultural legacy by threatening the Ukrainian Orthodox Church aligned with Moscow and attempting to eradicate Russian language and culture.
In his announcement of the “special military operation,” Putin emphasized Russia’s mission to reject the imposition of Western values, claiming they aimed to dismantle Russia’s traditional morals and beliefs. “This is not going to happen,” he declared, framing his actions as a defense of Russia’s spiritual identity against foreign interference.
This religious justification has been further reinforced by Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, which emphasizes the defense of Orthodoxy and traditional values as core principles.
Russian representatives at the UN frequently use this stance to deflect criticisms, accusing Ukraine of waging war against “canonical Orthodoxy” and comparing President Zelensky to ancient Roman persecutors of Christians. They claim peace can only be restored if Ukraine ceases its “persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
Support for this ideology is bolstered by the Moscow Patriarchate and its head, Patriarch Kirill, who endorsed the invasion early on as a necessary action to shield Russia from Western godlessness.
In a sermon shortly after the war began, Kirill framed the conflict as a battle over humanity’s alignment with God. By March 2024, his rhetoric grew bolder, with the World Russian Peoples’ Council, chaired by Kirill, declaring the invasion a “Holy War” meant to protect “Holy Russia” from the so-called satanic West.
However, the enlistment of North Korean troops casts a stark contrast against these religious justifications. North Korea’s soldiers are products of a state that views Christianity and other religions with deep hostility.
According to a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report, North Korea considers Christians to be “counter-revolutionaries” deserving severe punishment or even death.
The regime’s anti-religious stance portrays faith as a threat to its rigid social order, seeing Christianity as a particular danger due to its ideological opposition to the state’s personality cult.
The irony of relying on North Korean forces for a “holy war” underscores two things: the invasion’s primary motive as a land-grab for Russian imperial ambitions, and the Moscow Patriarchate’s failure to uphold a genuine theological justification for the invasion.
This should prompt a reassessment by nations that have so far avoided sanctioning the Russian church’s leaders. The participation of North Korean troops indicates the urgency of countering Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, and it is time to hold the enablers of this war — including the Moscow Patriarchate, which has evaded responsibility for years — accountable for their continued support.
