Russia Embraces Charlie Kirk: Kremlin Courts US Conservatives

Rus­sia is embrac­ing the late Char­lie Kirk through a new diplo­mat­ic effort by the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church and Krem­lin offi­cials. On 29 Sep­tem­ber 2025, Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Mikhail Zygar report­ed that Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tikhon Shevkunov, Vladimir Putin’s spir­i­tu­al advis­er, pub­lished a lauda­to­ry arti­cle about the Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive activist, declar­ing his con­tri­bu­tions to Chris­tian­i­ty would be ful­ly rec­og­nized. This rep­re­sents a strate­gic attempt to rebuild favor with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing recent ten­sions. The arti­cle begins:

If you think the romance between Don­ald Trump and Vladimir Putin end­ed after the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent called Rus­sia a paper tiger and wished vic­to­ry to Ukraine, you are under­es­ti­mat­ing the Krem­lin’s pro­pa­gan­dists and diplo­mats. The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church has stepped in, prais­ing Char­lie Kirk and declar­ing that his spe­cial con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty in the world will one day be ful­ly rec­og­nized. Last week, an arti­cle about Char­lie Kirk was writ­ten by Putin’s spir­i­tu­al advis­er, one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in Rus­sia and in the Ortho­dox Church, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tikhon Shevkunov. Here is how he begins his arti­cle: “Just a week ago, Char­lie Kirk’s name was vir­tu­al­ly unknown in Rus­sia. He burst into our infor­ma­tion space like a super­no­va explo­sion, pro­vok­ing a wave of indig­na­tion and admi­ra­tion.” Father Tikhon has not writ­ten — per­haps nev­er — about any for­eign­er with such rev­er­ence: “What is espe­cial­ly inspir­ing about Char­lie Kirk is his readi­ness to go forth with the word of the King­dom of Heav­en, about tra­di­tion­al val­ues, about con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, into places that would seem least receptive—places where the major­i­ty of peo­ple want to hear noth­ing of the sort.

Read more: https://zygaro.substack.com/p/russia-embraces-charlie-kirk

Key Points

• Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tikhon Shevkunov, Putin’s spir­i­tu­al advis­er, wrote a rev­er­ent arti­cle prais­ing Char­lie Kirk’s con­tri­bu­tions to Chris­tian­i­ty and tra­di­tion­al values.
• Kir­ill Dmitriev, Rus­si­a’s spe­cial envoy, open­ly con­firmed he request­ed the Ortho­dox Church rec­og­nize Kirk as part of diplo­mat­ic efforts with the Trump administration.
• Russ­ian ultra-right pro­pa­gan­dists com­pare Kirk to Darya Dug­i­na and Vladlen Tatarsky, fig­ures killed in attacks attrib­uted to Ukrain­ian intelligence.
• The Krem­lin’s praise of Kirk rep­re­sents a strate­gic attempt to win back Trump’s favor after recent ten­sions over Ukraine policy.

Russia & the Leadership of the Global National Conservative Alliance

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has long posi­tioned Rus­sia as the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), employ­ing cul­ture war themes that mir­ror right-wing polit­i­cal dis­course through­out the West. In his Octo­ber 2021 Val­dai Dis­cus­sion Club speech, Putin pre­sent­ed what Russ­ian aca­d­e­mics described as the first major call for rein­vent­ing Russ­ian ide­ol­o­gy, artic­u­lat­ing a vision of “healthy con­ser­vatism” that explic­it­ly attacked West­ern pro­gres­sive move­ments. He claimed the fight for equal­i­ty had “turned into aggres­sive dog­ma­tism bor­der­ing on absur­di­ty” while liken­ing con­tem­po­rary West­ern lib­er­al­ism to Sovi­et-era Bol­she­vism, posi­tion­ing Rus­sia as a bas­tion of tra­di­tion­al val­ues against West­ern moral decline.

Rus­sia has deployed exten­sive influ­ence oper­a­tions ampli­fy­ing these themes through state-con­trolled media out­lets. RT edi­tor-in-chief Mar­gari­ta Simonyan claimed to be help­ing for­eign fam­i­lies relo­cate to Rus­sia to escape West­ern school cur­ric­u­la. At the same time, Russ­ian state tele­vi­sion reg­u­lar­ly fea­tured Fox News clips and employed cul­ture-war nar­ra­tives. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed in 2021 that Putin’s attacks on “can­cel cul­ture” and trans­gen­der rights rep­re­sent­ed efforts to ral­ly hard­core con­ser­v­a­tives around tra­di­tion­al val­ues, rhetoric remark­ably sim­i­lar to right-wing pop­ulist lead­ers through­out East­ern Europe and the Unit­ed States. The Strate­gic Cul­ture Foun­da­tion, direct­ed by Rus­si­a’s For­eign Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, recruit­ed for­mer West­ern diplo­mats and jour­nal­ists to spread pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da dis­guised as inde­pen­dent analysis.

Despite Putin’s aspi­ra­tions, Rus­si­a’s role with­in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly dimin­ished by the war in Ukraine, allow­ing Hun­gary to emerge as the cen­tral bridge between Euro­pean and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives. Under Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán’s author­i­tar­i­an gov­er­nance, Hun­gary now hosts the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence annu­al­ly in Budapest, where Amer­i­can Repub­li­cans and Euro­pean far-right lead­ers cel­e­brate illib­er­al democracy.

NPR has doc­u­ment­ed how Hun­gary began reach­ing out to like-mind­ed polit­i­cal groups around 2014, invit­ing Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives who appre­ci­at­ed see­ing a pop­ulist gov­ern­ment using state resources to main­tain pow­er. PBS report­ed that Orbán has styled him­self as a cham­pi­on of “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy,” depict­ing Hun­gary as a defend­er of Euro­pean Chris­ten­dom while urg­ing inter­na­tion­al audi­ences to focus on “no migra­tion, no gen­der, no war.” The Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium, fund­ed by the Orbán gov­ern­ment, serves as the cen­ter of Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive activ­i­ty, spon­sor­ing events for promi­nent U.S. right-wing fig­ures, while Rus­sia con­tin­ues to employ these themes in its influ­ence operations.

Exter­nal References:
• Putin blasts ‘can­cel cul­ture’ and diver­si­ty at Val­dai Dis­cus­sion Club
• At CPAC, Hun­gary’s Vik­tor Orban decries LGBTQ+ rights, migration
• CPAC gives Vik­tor Orbán, Hun­gary’s auto­crat­ic leader, star role in Dallas

 Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.