Dr. Dmytro Vovk

On Wednesday March 22, 2023, the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College hosted a lunchtime talk cosponsored by the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center featuring Dr. Dmytro Vovk, visiting professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and director of the Center for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Ukraine.

Dr. Vovk's talk was titled, "Satan Destroying the Church: Russia's Use of Religious Rhetoric to Justify the Aggression against Ukraine." Dr. Vovk examined the role of religion in Vladimir Putin's rationalizations for the invasion of Ukraine. Since 2014, Putin has attempted to present the attack on Ukraine as Russia’s defensive war for their spiritual and moral values and heritage. In these attempts, he was supported by the Russian Orthodox Church developing a quasi-religious ideology known as russkiy mir, which claims, among other things, Moscow’s exclusive political influence over Ukraine, Russia’s moral superiority, and that Russia is destined to save the world from the hegemony of a corrupt and decadent West. Now, Dr. Vovk indicated, as the war is dragging on, Putin and his affiliates have developed this argumentation even further comparing the West with Satanism and arguing that in Ukraine, Russia conducts war against “Satan” and “Antichrist.”

Dr. Vovk emphasized that the religious and spiritual arguments employed by Russian politicans, religious leaders and propagandists, serve as conceptual and rhetorical tools to justify the aggressive war and Russia’s political ends in Ukraine. But they also demonstrate how deeply Russian political elites and the public mind are poisoned with chauvinism and imperial nationalism. Dr. Vovk's talk was informed by both his academic background and personal life, including photos from his hometown of Kharkiv documenting the damage done by Russian bombings to Orthodox Christian churches and the menorah in Drobytsky Yar, a memorial to the massacre of Ukrainian Jews in December 1941.

He also answered students' questions about the function of religious life in Ukrainian and Russian society. "Dr. Vovk gave me new insight into the role of religion in a mostly secular culture," said Shimon Greengart '25YC, referring to the combination of high religious identification and low religious participation in Russia. "We're grateful to Dr. Vovk for sharing his insights into the religious and political dimensions of the war," said Dr. Eliezer Schnall, director of the Honors Program. "We are so fortunate he was able to make time to speak to our students."