Patriarch Kirill’s new book turns Russia’s war into a sacred battle against evil. We read it so you don’t have to.

In late July, the Moscow Patriarchate’s publishing house released Patriarch Kirill’s new book, Za predelami vidimykh prichin i sledstviy (“War. Beyond Visible Causes and Effects”). Meduza asked Ilya Venyavkin, author of Khram voiny (“The Temple of War”) — a book about the ideas that made Russia’s invasion of Ukraine possible — to read it and explain the ideology Kirill lays out and how he justifies the war.