*'A TIMELY AND IMPORTANT BOOK' - ORLANDO FIGES* *'SPELLBINDING' - ANDREI KURKOV* *ONE OF HISTORY TODAY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2024* For more than a millennium, the Russian Orthodox Church has shown astonishing survival skills - from the Mongol yoke to tsarist demagoguery and enlightenment, from Soviet atheism to the chaotic 1990s. Now again, it is at the right hand of power, sanctifying Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In this provocative new book, Lucy Ash reveals how, under Putin, religion is being stripped of its spiritual content and used as a weapon to control the population. Orthodox...