Moscow archpriest calls for new death squads to destroy ‘traitor-emigres’

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, former head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for relations between church and society, has called for the creation of special death squads to hunt down and destroy emigres who, he suggests, are often traitors and enemies of the Russian Federation. The Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s Russia have a long and notorious history of kidnapping and killing political emigres, but neither the communists nor the Putinists ever have boldly proclaimed that they have done so. Instead, both sought to cover up such crimes rather than to celebrate them.

Chaplin’s remarks are noteworthy because they suggest that in the current environment, there are people near the Kremlin who are prepared to move from taking such actions in the shadow to pursuing such goals boldly and baldly, yet another mark of the degradation of Russian life and morality under Vladimir Putin.

To struggle against “traitors to the motherland,” Chaplin calls for the introduction of “an entire system of punishments: to end the moratorium on the use of the death penalty, to “’authorize’ special units” to go after traitor emigres, and even “to use targeted rocket strikes against traitors” “We do not need all the time to take into account what our historical enemies and their propaganda says,” Chaplin says. “Our civilization is truly Christian, always ready to stand up for itself and not to give a single chance to the enemies of the people.” Russia recognizes, as Europeans don’t, that there are those who are “in principle dangerous” and must be destroyed.

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