Putin’s Covert War on Western Decadence

The influence of the Russian Orthodox church on public life is growing fast, thanks to Kremlin patronage. The church's preferred instrument of control is a draconian law criminalising ‘offending the feeling of religious believers' that was passed in the wake of a protest by the feminist punk group Pussy Riot in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in 2012. Prosecutions under the law have kicked into high gear this year. In March in Stavropol, south Russia, criminal charges were brought against Viktor Krasnov after he wrote ‘God does not exist' on the VKontakte social network, Russia's version of Facebook. Krasnov was ordered to spend over a month undergoing examinations in a psychiatric ward before he was finally deemed sane enough to stand trial, and the case continues.