Propaganda in holy orders: Africa, Ukraine, and the Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church’s expansion into Africa is a reminder that Western policymakers should treat the church as an arm of the Russian state
Experts & Staff
Ksenia Luchenko
Visiting Fellow
Areas of expertise
Russian Orthodox Christianity and its influence on Russian politics and society; church-state and church-public relations in eastern Europe; political and cultural history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th and 21st centuries; Russian media and journalism, propaganda, and ideology
Languages
Russian, English, French
Biography
Ksenia Luchenko is a visiting fellow with the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She is a journalist, researcher, and analyst who emigrated from Russia in April 2022. Previously, she was dean of the Department of Media Communications at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences and head of the Department of Theory and Practice of Media Communications at the School of Public Policy of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Luchenko is the author of several dozen journalistic and scholarly articles on religious life in post-Soviet Russia and the role of Orthodoxy in the formation of the Putin regime. She is also the editor of several documentaries about Soviet dissidents and intellectuals. She holds a PhD in philology from Moscow State University
Stuck in the ‘90s: How Russia’s opposition can shape its political future by reconciling with its past
Russian president Vladimir Putin presents himself as the antidote to the pain of the 1990s, instead fashioning his leadership as a continuation of Russia’s grand history. By reconciling with this past, Russia’s opposition can threaten Putin’s legitimacy and offer Russia a path towards a new political future