Since the 1990s, a complex transformation has occurred in post-Soviet Russia: a top-down process of religious re-integration into cultural, social, and political life (desecularization from above), while Russian Orthodoxy simultaneously has experienced internal secularization within this process. Patriarch Kirill’s Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has actively promoted traditional values through grassroots nationalism. This cultural blending of religion and politics has been reinforced by patriotic rhetoric that constrains pluralism across social domains. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the ROC’s limited autonomy from state power, and the Church’s narrative of traditional values lost its potency. The invasion of Ukraine epitomized this trend, with Kirill’s “Russian World” doctrine revealing a fusion of religious, nationalist, and intolerant ideologies aligning with secular nationalist agendas and exposing a fundamental commitment to political ideology over genuine spiritual contemplation.