Quoted By:
many years was even directed by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church entirely staffed by Soviet KGB officers.
Under Putin, as is widely recognized, nominally “former” KGB officers have taken under their control “the levers of power in the state apparatus of the Russian Federation” and over academic institutions, the media, banking, major business concerns, and institutions like the Russian Orthodox Church.
Their role in the ROC MP is both especially noxious and especially obvious, Khazanov-Pashkovsky continues. “Two of the largest organizations closely connected with the church’s activity, theImperial Orthodox Palestinian Societyand theFoundation of Andrey the First Called, are now controlled by theFSBand theSVR.
The first, which has existed more than a century, is an example of the FSB’s proclivity to raid and take over institutions and run them for its own purposes, just as some still suspect the Cheka did by using some real monarchists as a cover for its creation of the cover story for the Trust in the 1920s.
Both institutions engage in espionage and as agents of influence abroad, confusing their targets about what is really going on.
What is less widely recognized is that the Putin regime runs Trust-like operations against its own people, especially those who identify as nationalists and/or monarchists, Khazanov-Pashkovsky says. One of these is theTwo-Headed Eagle Society, which claims to be monarchist but in fact is simply pro-Putin in all regards.
The Society is well-funded by oligarchs close to the Kremlin, and its leaders are people with backgrounds in the security
