Tsar Vlad and his clash of civilizations

If Lev Nicolaievich Tolstoy were to write his most famous novel today, he would be forced to call it "Special Military Operation and Peace". War? On the banks of the river Moskva as well as in the streets of Novosibirsk the word is taboo and appears only on the signs of the demonstrations, which are immediately nipped in the bud by the police. "There is no war", the Russian media have the audacity to say in their daily dose of disinformation to the subjects of Tsar Vlad, a nickname that has been published in the international press and on some social networks. Those who are lucky enough to live in countries where the media are not subjected to gags or filters know that the situation is very different and that not only there is war and that it is broadcasted almost across the entire planet in a continuous live, but there are now more wars in one: military (with the number of victims, including civilians, increasing day by day), warlike (with the tenacious resistance of the Ukrainians), economic (with the imposition of sanctions by the West), humanitarian (with a biblical exodus of refugees), cybernetic (with hacking elevated to the level of offense). At the root of all this is an autocrat who feels humiliated and offended (Fedor Dostoevsky teaches) and who unleashes his demons of nihilism (ditto) because of NATO's tentacles, an invasion seen by the free world as an abuse of power, an oppressed people who react with a courage like the Ukrainian one that moves mountains and other people who are forbidden to react, such as the Russian community. But to unleash the hatred that every war generates, on both sides, is the spectre, in addition to the nuclear one, which Putin himself uses as an idealistic weapon, that is the clash of civilizations. On March 9, Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, took the floor, demonstrating that in Russia the Church proclaims a truth of faith that is then defended by the State. Conscious of his autonomy from the Ukrainian native church detached from Moscow, Kirill did nothing but echo the language of Putin, who considers the Western world "the empire of lies," the "enemy of mankind," even "the great Satan. The Kremlin's intent is to disguise a conflict such as the one underway between Russia and Ukraine and which has a precise political nature in a deadly duel between a civilization and its savage opposite. No one in Moscow has gone so far as to assert the superiority of Russian civilization, but it is a short step. Putin's stance seems to aim in the long run at embracing the argument put forward by the political scientist now deceased Samuel Huntington in his famous article published in 1993 in the magazine "Foreign Affairs" and entitled The Clash of Civilizations? (do not miss the question mark). According to Huntington, in the post-Cold War world, cultural identities and religion would be the primary source of conflict. By applying this conception to Putin's current vision, it can be assumed that the nation-states are turning to be replaced by great powers with strong and separate identities that aspire, not to world domination, but to become worlds that are closed in on themselves, each perhaps under the protective umbrella of its own nuclear arsenal. Moreover, on which foundation does the Russian-Ukrainian conflict rely if not on that of Moscow's strong identity that has crossed the whole of Russian history over the centuries? It is in the name of this principle that Putin is revolting today against the West which is considered flaccid and decayed (but which in reality is presenting an unusually united front) and against a liberal world order described as obsolete (an idea yet to be proven) in favor of a profoundly hostile Manichean position.