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By Isabel van Brugen
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The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has said that his country's nuclear weapons saved the nation.
Kirill, who has justified Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 on spiritual and ideological grounds, made the remarks on October 18 as he presented a Church honor to physicist Radiy Ilkaev, an honorary scientific director of Russia's Federal Nuclear Center in the town of Sarov.
There have been growing fears throughout Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia may use nuclear weapons. Many fear that Ukraine retaking Crimea would be a red line for Russia and that Putin may use his country's nuclear capabilities to defend the territory that he annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
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Russia's nuclear weapons were created under "ineffable divine providence," Kirill said.
"Were it not for the work of [Soviet atomic bomb creator Igor] Kurchatov and his colleagues, it is difficult to say if our country would still exist," he said.
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Soviet scientists "created weapons under the protection of St. Seraphim of Sarov because, by the ineffable providence of God, these weapons were created in the monastery of St. Seraphim," Kirill said. "Thanks to this power, Russia has remained independent and free, and, of course, we must all cherish this remarkable feat of our scientists, who practically saved the country, in our hearts and memories."
Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment via email.
Last month, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Putin's ally, proposed testing nuclear weapons at Russia's nuclear test site in Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic Ocean archipelago, "at least once" to scare the West.
Moscow has not carried out a nuclear test since before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union last carried out a nuclear weapons test in 1990.
The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, an underwater explosion, at Novaya Zemlya in 1955. Until 1990, a total of 130 tests were carried out at the site, including the October 1961 detonation of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested, the 50MT AN602 Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, according to the non-profit organization Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Kirill has justified Putin's decision to invade Ukraine by saying Russia is a "peace-loving power" that does not engage in "military adventures."
In June 2022, he said that Russia was being attacked all over the world because of feelings of jealousy, envy and indignation, adding that he believed this was happening because Russia is "different."
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