Religious Symbols in War
Abstract: The role of religious and para-religious symbols in shaping collective identities within contemporary conflicts, with particular reference to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Through a historical and cultural analysis, it highlights how Orthodoxy—revived with force after the dissolution of the USSR—has become a central element of the Russian political model and a tool for legitimizing power and military action. In the context of war, confessional, patriotic, and secularized symbols acquire propagandistic and motivational functions, reinforcing the “us versus them” dichotomy. From the “Z” marking on Russian tanks to militarized icons such as “St. Javelin,” symbolism becomes an identity-building and justificatory weapon, losing its original pacifying vocation in a broader transformation of the sacred into an instrument of conflict and division.
Keywords: #Geopolitics #ReligiousSymbols #RussoUkrainianConflict #Orthodoxy #Propaganda #CollectiveIdentity #HybridWarfare #Symbolism #ReligionAndCulture #Russia #Ukraine #Putin #Kirill #StJavelin #Secularization #SymphonyOfPowers #IdentityConflict #ReligionInCrisis #WarfareIconography #ReligiousSoftPower #AntonelloDeOto #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasJournal #ScientificJournal #SocialSciences #ethicasocietasupli
Antonello De Oto: expert in geopolitics, law, and identity at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Full Professor of Law and Religion and Intercultural Law (BA in Political Science), Cultural Heritage Law (BA in Performing Arts – DAMS), and Protection and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage of Religious Interest (BA in Visual Arts).Curriculum on Alma Mater Studiorum studiorum.
In the geopolitics of conflict, the identity-building use of religious symbols and, ultimately, the instrumentalization of confessional symbols for justificatory purposes become an important cog in the motivational machinery of war.
That “God wills it!”—which for centuries has echoed through the trenches and during hand-to-hand assaults—does not lose its force in the era of ultrasonic bombs, drones, electronic warfare, and cyber operations more generally.
The proxemics of symbols feeds on and lives through its own specific lexicon, enjoying unchanged success among the public and the press. Symbols invoked by the opposing sides that are at times fully confessional, at times “weakly religious” (“that ‘murmur’ of confessional meaning that the symbol continues to carry within itself”[1]), and at times transformed—thanks in part to secularization—into wholly patriotic symbols, unconsciously acting as standard-bearers of a civil religion, to borrow from Durkheim, moving between authority and freedom[2].
It is precisely in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict—whether defined as a “special military operation” in Putin’s lexicon or as an “invasion of Ukraine,” as described by almost the entirety of the Western world—that the weight of words and symbols has acquired particular significance.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Bear, stunned by the rapid succession of events that had decreed the end of the communist world and of the Warsaw Pact, when releasing territories that had declared independence from the Red Empire, brought back into the public sphere values seemingly buried, though well preserved in the hearts of the average Russian and Ukrainian. Issues of canonical territory resurfaced, along with rites, ritual practices, worship traditions, and confessional distinctions. Moscow once again presented itself as the “Third Rome,” and the culture of Orthodoxy returned to prominence. The Orthodox Church had certainly paid a heavy price under the regime, but it had also, indirectly—through that same regime—imposed a price on the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic community (the so-called “Uniates” were immediately repressed: leadership as early as April–May 1945, then priests and laypeople who refused to convert to Orthodoxy)[3].
This Orthodox culture, deposited and sedimented in the Russian soul, fully resurfaced after the end of communism: in accordance with the principle of the “symphony of powers,” a para-confessional model of Tsarist origin adapted to modernity. A political arrangement in which Church and State are to serve as reciprocal guarantors, working together for the edification and progress of “Holy Mother Russia.” A relational model in which the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal progressively fades, with Putin increasingly acting publicly as the guardian of Orthodoxy (in Russian, bljustitel’).
The acceleration of the war necessarily demands symbolic justification, and so apotropaic signs associated with the Russophone world appear on Russian tanks, such as the “Z”[4]; the Patriarch Kirill publicly blesses the bombs[5]; and, in full violation of international humanitarian law, places of worship and cultural heritage sites[6] (a paradigmatic example being the Mariupol Theater, razed completely to the ground) become military targets—declared or otherwise—struck “by mistake,” yet still part plena of the “lateral” war, the identity-based war, which in reality is anything but lateral, as it unfortunately serves to divide, to build walls, and to pour salt into the wounds of conflict. To justify the “us versus them.” To motivate troops both in defense and in attack.
Thus, in a mirrored dynamic, images of Madonnas wielding military symbols appear on the walls of Kyiv, such as “St. Javelin, a saint cradling an anti-tank weapon”—an icon[7] created by Christian Borys, a Canadian of Ukrainian origin; and the Zelensky government, through an ad hoc law, settles accounts with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church loyal to Moscow by declaring it unlawful[8].
In this way, religious symbols, weakly religious symbols, and confessional symbols that have become fully patriotic are transformed into improper weapons, instruments of propaganda, and involuntary ethical justifiers of the conflict, thereby losing their primary function—which would be, in a perfect and ideal world, to serve as a peaceful testimony to a history, a worldview, a way of understanding life.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
[1] P.L. BERGER, The Rumor of Angels. The Sacred in Contemporary Society, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995.
[2] T. PAGOTTO, Civil Religion between Authority and Freedom, Turin, Giappichelli, 2024.
[3] CODEVILLA, Church and Empire in Russia. From Kievan Rus’ to the Russian Federation, Milan, Jaca Book, 2011, p. 467.
[4] In fact, many meanings are attributed today to the letter “Z”, but whatever the correct and unique one might be—assuming there is only one—it has now become a national symbol, a sign of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Notably, in the Cyrillic alphabet the letter “Z” does not exist in this form; the corresponding letter is written as “з”. See A. CRUCIANI, Will the “Z” Symbol Become the New Swastika? From the Celtic Cross to the KKK and ISIS, the Viral Signs of Horror, in Il bianconero dell’Isis – Il simbolo Z sui carri armati russi in Ucraina: tutti i segni di guerra e terrore nella storia – Corriere.it, 11 March 2022.
[5] P.G. ACCORNERO, Popes Do Not Bless Weapons and Armies. Kirill Does, in La Voce e il Tempo, 7 June 2022.
[6] Many places of worship have been destroyed, damaged, or occupied, with numbers steadily increasing since 2022. See Redazione, In Ukraine, 270 Religious Buildings Have Been Destroyed or Attacked, in www.romasette.it, 28 September 2022; M.C. BIAGIONI, Ukraine: WCC, at Least 494 Religious Buildings Destroyed, Damaged, Looted, or Seized to Be Used as Russian Military Bases, in www.difesadelpopolo.it, weekly of the Diocese of Padua, 22 September 2023.
[7] C. TARTARINI, Déjà-vu and Statues Quo. Museum Fronts and Monument Fronts, in The Spectacle of War, (eds.) A. LORUSSO – M. SANTORO, Rome, Donzelli, 2025, p. 109.
[8] G. GAMBASSI, The Kyiv Parliament Bans the Orthodox Church “Tied to Moscow”, in www.avvenire.it, 20 August 2024.
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