Putin Promises Heaven

Putin promises Christians who die for his cause – heaven! It is on! The Battle of Armageddon.

John ‘The Nazarite’

President Vladimir Putin has promised Russians a place in heaven. Yes, it would appear, all Russians.

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual gathering of international Russia experts, Putin answered a series of softball questions from a veteran foreign-affairs journalist, followed by a series of equally unchallenging questions, peppered with praise for the president, from the audience. Altogether, Putin spent three and a half hours

About a third of the way through, Putin conjured the spectre of nuclear war, most likely with the United States, though he didn’t name the enemy explicitly. “As martyrs, we will go to heaven,” he promised. “And they will just croak because they won’t even have time to repent.”

Putin indicated that he was explaining the Russian military doctrine, which, he said, doesn’t reserve the right of first strike for Russia. “I want everyone present here, and everyone who is going to analyze every word I say here and use it in one way or another in their own storytelling, to keep in mind: our concept of using nuclear arms does not allow for a preventive strike,” he said. “Our concept is responsive and reciprocal.”

He then explained what he meant. If an enemy fired a nuclear missile, all of Russia’s surveying and computing minds would go to work to calculate its trajectory and velocity. “And then when we are certain—all of this is happening over the course of several seconds—that the target of the attack is Russian territory, then and only then do we respond with a strike. This will be the reciprocal counter strike. Why counter? Because they are flying at us, and counter is the flying [sic] in the direction of the aggressor. Of course this will be a global catastrophe, but I repeat, we can’t initiate this catastrophe because we don’t have preventive strike. Yes, this is a situation where we are kind of waiting around for someone to use nuclear weapons against us and aren’t doing anything ourselves. Yes, sure. But the aggressor still must know that retribution is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, while we are the victims of aggression.”