Putin and the Almighty’s gender self-ID

Vladimir Putin suffered a difficulty of his own making in his big anniversary speech on Tuesday. He was calling for something not far short of total war – a cluster of schemes to house, improve, offer therapy to and reconfigure the command of the armed services, to withdraw Russia and Russians from the global economy and to direct economic activity into areas most likely to defeat western technology. Yet he has always maintained that his country is not at war, and it does not sound very ringing to call (in the phrase which he first used a year ago and repeats today) for a total ‘special military operation’. He therefore likes to maximise the number of enemies and threats Russians must consider. Not satisfied with his traditional ones, such as Ukrainian ‘neo-Nazis’ and the imperialist United States, he also fastened on what he called ‘the Anglican Church’. It was planning, he said, ‘to explore the idea of a gender-neutral God’.