There have been two formidable challenges to the neo-imperial dominance of the Russian World and its overt masculinity, one within Russia, and one outside of it. The punk band Pussy Riot presented the first direct challenge through their public prayer service performance in Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2012.^[10] The Ukrainian people presented the second challenge, primarily through the Maidan revolution, and secondarily through the attainment of canonical autocephaly from the patriarch of Constantinople in 2018–19. Russia responded in both cases through hybrid war, waging a brutal assault on the perpetrators physically and through the media.

Pussy Riot’s performance caricatured Patriarch Kirill and the Church as Putin’s puppets in their happy marginalization of all misfits and outcasts, especially women and the LGBT community. The band stood on the solea of Christ the Savior Cathedral, beginning their punk performance with a melodic motif from Rachmaninov’s setting of ‘Rejoice, o Virgin, mother of God’, no. 6 from his famous Vespers. Pussy Riot altered the lyrics, singing ‘O Mother of God, Virgin, banish Putin!’ The rest of the song mocks Patriarch Kirill for blind sycophantism, hoarding wealth, stealing the people’s freedom, and disregarding and discarding the marginalized of Russian society.^[11]

The timing of this performance is crucial: it occurred just a few months after the historic visit of the belt worn by Mary, the Mother of God, to Moscow. Muscovites had waited in line for days in the cold to have a chance to venerate the belt in the cathedral, and the Church used the opportunity to invite the people into the Church, distributing copies of Mary’s belt and disseminating stories of miraculous healings and conceptions that had occurred within the short timeframe of the visit. Pussy Riot’s invocation of Mary throughout the punk performance called upon Mary not to perform miracles, but to banish Putin and become a feminist, placing Mary, Mother of God, among the marginalized dismissed by Putin and the Church because they represent a threat to the moral fiber of the Russian World.^[12]

In Orthodox liturgy and piety, Mary bears many titles, including Strategios, the general of an army that defends God’s people. To this day, Orthodox people call upon Mary to defeat their enemies, carrying her icon into battle and attributing victories to her protection. Pussy Riot’s appeal for Mary to banish Putin and become a feminist is an act of subversion that exposes the masculine features of Putin’s regime and the Russian Church. The song pleads with Mary to remove the patriarch and president who expel the marginalized, depicting Mary as an advocate for the marginalized, and not for those who adhere to traditional patriarchal values.

The Russian government acted swiftly in condemning Pussy Riot’s performance as a criminal act of hooliganism, sentencing them to two years in prison. Representatives of the Church harshly condemned their performance as blasphemous and offensive, an opinion held by ordinary Russian citizens as well. The Pussy Riot incident was one of the few incidents of a grassroots challenge to the establishment of the Russian World – Putin and Patriarch Kirill – that came from within Russia. A similar situation unfolded at the Olympics in Sochi in 2014 when the punk band seized the opportunity for another prophetic challenge. In this instance, the official response was in an instance of brutal masculinity, as a special ensemble of Cossack police pursued the band members, with one male officer publicly whipping band members during the dispersal.^[13]

Pussy Riot’s performances were subversive acts that called out the alliance of Church and state, especially since three band members performed a forbidden punk prayer service at a location in the cathedral that prohibited women for public performance. The use of brutal force to end the Sochi performance and publicly humiliate the band symbolizes the masculine character of Putin’s Russia, especially with the male officer beating female performers.^[14] Supporters of the crackdown on Pussy Riot justified their actions on the basis of the accusation that Pussy Riot’s feminist agenda would introduce the depravity of Western secularism to Russia.^[15]

The masculine ideology of post-Soviet Russia condemns the feminism of Pussy Riot while honoring ‘Putin’s Army’, a group of young women who express their support for Putin through erotic imagery.^[16] The women posing for Putin project an image of the proper space and role of women in the Russian World. Women are to satisfy the needs of men in the world dominated by masculinity; challenges to the masculine-dominant paradigm are prohibited and will be attacked with brutal force.^[17]

This scene unfolded on a larger scale with broader geopolitical implications during the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution in 2013–14. While the diverse group of people that assembled on independence square were protesting the Ukrainian president, the movement was a veritable rejection of the Russian World.^[18] Participants in the Maidan Revolution sought to build a new Ukraine on the basis of dignity, nonviolence, transparency, and accountability.^[19] They envisioned Ukraine as a core country of the European Union, an aspiration that posed a threat to Putin’s neo-imperial agenda. Historically, Central and Western European literature, music, and values entered Russia via Ukraine as the country bordering both Poland and Russia, a legacy of cultural influence with which Russian ideologues were intimately familiar. Putin and Patriarch Kirill’s Russian World identified Ukraine as a crucial cell of the Orthodox civilization, and the Ukrainian people’s determination to join Europe instead of Putin’s Eurasian project was construed by Russia as an act of betrayal. The photos and videos capture the drama of the confrontation between the people and the Berkut riot police. The death of one hundred innocents resulted in the valorization of the heavenly hundred.

But the Maidan was only the beginning of bloodshed. Russia responded to Ukraine’s decision to embrace the West as an evil act of betrayal. Putin annexed Crimea by force and waged a war in Donbas that has resulted in over 13,000 casualties and the displacement of 1.5 million people – an enduring human catastrophe.

While Putin publicly denies Russia’s role in the war, it is supported by mainstream Russian clergy. Mikhail Suslov’s research on the sentiments of clergy and laity on the Ukrainian revolution and ensuing war in Donbas disclose the justification for bellicose action.^[20] Ukraine’s choice for the West violated the core values holding the Russian World together. A vote for Europe was a vote for secular humanism and all of the threats to Orthodoxy that accompany it, especially feminism and the pro-gay lobby. Depicting the Maidan as an event where Ukrainians betrayed not only Russians, their brothers in the faith, but also the Orthodox faith they hold in common, was possible only if the devil had taken possession of the Ukrainian people.^[21] The only solution was to remove the evil threat from the Russian World, with the understanding that Ukraine belongs to Russia in the post-Soviet ideological scheme.

Cyril Hovorun demonstrates how the Russian Orthodox Church supported Putin in transforming the Russian World ideology into a political religion that turned to terrorism in its campaign of Occidentalism.^[22] The use of brutal military force would excise the evil threat posed by European secularism in Ukraine from the sanctity of the Russian World. The anti-Ukrainian enmity was also cause for official representatives of the Russian Church to bless soldiers who would fight in Russia’s war against the devil in Ukraine, resulting in the creation of a ‘Russian Orthodox army’.^[23] Raising an army of men to defend the values of the Russian World threatened by Ukraine’s flirtation with Europe was the only action befitting the masculine strongman leading Russia who held on to his position of power by force, and imposed his power not only in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Georgia. The fight was not merely a matter of saving Ukraine from Europe. The sanctity of the micro- and macro-level masculine strongholds that function as  apparatuses of the Russian World were at stake. The men who forced Ukraine to remain subordinate to the Russian World were attempting to protect the ideal male household paradigm from the corruption of feminist and LGBTI threats. By appealing to the right to defend its people and protect its national interests in the Ukrainian crisis, both Russia’s Occidentalism and systematic masculinization were exposed.^[24]