Pope Francis just got the Charlemagne Prize from the EU, but Putin seems --- "Seems," I say --- to be the one who deserves it: defender of Christians.
Putin may be a defender of Christians in the Middle East, but not in Ukraine. There were reports at the time of his invasion of Crimea that his government did not recognize the Ukrainian Catholic Church as legitimate (as opposed to the Ukrainian Orthodox) and I would guess that the situation would be the same for any Ukrainian Catholics in the Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine, but I haven’t heard any recent news about their treatment.