In Andrei Shishkin's neo-Romantic painting Put' Ratnika, “The Way of the Warrior,” a youthful blonde soldier in camo fatigues, with backpack and a machine gun slung over his shoulder, stands on the edge of a stone circle gazing—respectfully, one gathers, to judge from his removed helmet—upon the statue-menhir of an ancient Slavic god.
The god is himself a warrior, with helm and sword. Before him burns a sacrificial fire; behind him, a cloudy army rides across the sky.
As Mariya Lesiv describes in her 2013 book The Return of Ancestral Gods, contemporary paganism in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine tends to be characterized by both a profound social conservatism and a pronounced nationalistic character. In the ongoing Russian-backed war in Donbas—the two break-away provinces in south-eastern Ukraine where fighting has continued since 2014—there has been a noteworthy pagan presence on both sides of the conflict, including one all-pagan battalion named for Svarog, the ancient pan-Slavic god of Fire. To judge from the kolovrat patch on his shoulder, Shishkin's soldier may be a member of one such. Perhaps we are to understand that it is he who has lit the sacrificial fire.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin goes through with his proposed invasion and annexation of Ukraine, we can be sure that there will be pagans fighting among both the invading and the defending forces.
