Some folks forget that Islam is an officially recognized religion in Russia along with Russian Orthodox Christianity and other faiths. While the U.S. has 3.3 million Muslims constituting 1% of the population, Russia has nearly 10 million Muslims constituting 6% of the population.
“Islam is considered as one of Russia’s traditional religions, legally a part of Russian historical heritage.
Muslims constitute the majority nationalities in the North Caucasus regions residing in the states between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: Tatars, Circassians, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kabardin, Karachay, and numerous Dagestani peoples. Also, in the middle of the Volga Basin reside populations of Bulgars and Bashkirs, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. There are over 5,000 registered religious Muslim organizations (divided into Sunni (including Sufi) and Shia groups), which is over one sixth of the number of registered Russian Orthodox religious organizations.”—Wikipedia
The time to befriend Russia was immediately after the collapse of the USSR.
The Russian people were ready to turn the page.
Instead America and NATO kept acting as if we were still deep in the cold war.
We let NATO put the squeeze on Russia by picking up their former satellite countries and moving missile batteries to their borders.
That just fed their inherent national paranoia and now we are back at loggerheads with each other again.
Putin is more Christian than the Pope.
Better we don’t have to go to war with Russia but it probably will happen. Never trust Russians!
I will drink to the person who splatters Putin’s brains with lead to the head. Maybe someday the drunken fools in Russia will overthrow the thugs who own them and treat them as dogs, but I doubt it.
Ease up. We just got started on making America real America’s ally again.
I support a missionary in Russia (Lutheran). He gets along well with the Orthodox, and they agree that neither will poach the other’s members.
However, they do not tolerate evangelicals.
We have to remember that until relatively recently, it was difficult to be a Catholic in England or a Lutheran in Spain.
Like Mormons, they aren’t really Christian /s