DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

Handmaidens of the Russian Regime: Priests’ Wives Taking Ukrainian Children in Russia’s War against Ukraine

This paper analyzes the ways in which two Russian women politicians, Anna Kuznetsova and Maria Lvova-Belova, with state support, have seized on the issue of saving Ukrainian children as a way to validate Russia’s war against Ukraine using gender and national stereotypes. Their appearances also serve as performances of the harmony of church and state that the Russian Orthodox Church has promoted, known in Russian as “symphonia.”

Elizabeth A. Wood is Ford International Professor of History at MIT, where she directs the MIT-Ukraine Program.