In President Putin’s well-considered and judicious remarks to the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres on April 26, I note two statements that shed an interesting light on his larger goals in pursuing the war in Ukraine and more generally on the position Russia has taken up as the head of the resistance to the universal hegemony of the West:

We are also surprised to hear statements by our colleagues that imply that some in the world have exceptional status or can claim exclusive rights because the Charter of the United Nations reads that all participants in international communication are equal regardless of their strength, size or geographical location. I think this is similar to what the Bible reads about all people being equal. I am sure we will find the same idea in both the Quran and the Torah. All people are equal before God. So, the idea that someone can claim a kind of exceptional status is very strange to us.

Since every word from Putin’s mouth is considered, I take the manner in which he has articulated his concerns about certain UN members to be highly significant.

First, it should be noted that he is attacking exceptionalism of any kind, which would imply both American exceptionalism and any other exceptionalism.

Now, exceptionalism is much the same thing as supremacism.

President Putin of course has positioned himself  very publicly  against Nazism, specifically the Nazism exhibited by some parts of the Ukrainian government. That is well known. However, he has for some time been hinting at something more.

And here he is clarifying what that is. It is the more general category to which Nazism belongs, supremacism.

The political point Putin is making to the Secretary-General is that actions of member-states that are similar should be treated similarly by the UN. If Kosovo could declare itself independent and this was recognized by the International Court, then the independence of the Donbass should be treated equally. Equality before the law cannot co-exist with an exceptionalist treatment of one country, permitting it a leeway  in action none other has. American exceptionalism is clearly the target here.

Then, significantly, President Putin, derives the equality of member- states in the UN from  the notion of equality among human beings given to us in religious scripture. And here he does something very illuminating.  He lists the religious texts that support the notion of equality: the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah.

Notice that he omits the Talmud and he omits any Hindu scripture, such as the Vedas or Upanishads, but since Hinduism is not represented in Russia in any substantial way, so that is not a surprise. What is a surprise is his omission of the Talmud, which is the scripture that most regulates Jewish practice, since Judaism, especially Chabad, is well-represented in Russia.  In fact, Chabad is the most powerful Jewish community in the country. Now, there is no question that there is in Chabad a supremacist vein, found in such texts as Ha Tanya, as well as, more generally, in the Talmud. Thus, when President Putin omits any reference to the Talmud and instead directly mentions the Torah, it is significant, since the Torah is most important among true Torah following Jews, who are anti-Zionist and constitute a very small group, and among the equally small group of Karaite Jews.

Besides that omission, the order of the list is also significant. President Putin mentions the Bible first, giving pride of place to Christianity among the traditional Russian faiths. He then mentions the Koran, giving Islam the second place, and with the Torah, gives Judaism its due. This particular ordering might be linked to the size of the demographic each religion represents in the Russian federation, with the state aligning itself first with the Orthodox faith and presenting itself as the defender of that faith.

From the political context, it is clear that President Putin is opposing his defense of equality to the supremacism practiced by two exceptionalist groups, the one in Ukraine which has a pagan and occult basis, and the one embodied in NATO and the West, that also draws on the pagan and the occult. I will leave it open whether one should extrapolate from Mr. Putin’s words an implicit indictment of Talmudic supremacism or not.

Now, contrast this with the words of the head of the Catholic church, Pope Francis, in a speech to Congress on September 24, 2015, in which he called for inclusion and fraternity. The Pope managed to mention both Moses and Mohammed but omitted the name of Jesus Christ. Clearly, in that at least President Putin is a more forthright defender of the Christian faith in the public sphere.