Has Russia really converted?
This is asked due to Mary’s prediction in the Fatima secrets that, “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.”
It is also asked because at Medjugorje, in former Yugoslavia — Communist at the time — the Virgin allegedly said that “the Russian people will be the people who will glorify God the most. The West has made civilization progress, but without God, as if they were their own creators.”
Obviously, part of the Fatima prophecy materialized: Russia did spread its atheistic errors around the world, in the form of viral Communism, and during Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, it mercilessly persecuted Christians.
All that changed, or seemed to, with the fall of Communism in the late 1980s, and the Orthodox have been feverishly rebuilding edifices that Communists had destroyed or used as warehouses — such that, where under Communism there had been just five hundred left, there are now approximately 25,000 churches and a thousand monasteries.
And while one recent year just eleven percent of Russians marked Easter in a church, Christianity in Russia — that is, Eastern Orthodox Christianity — has resurrected in a dramatic way, and the government not only has allowed it, but — at least on the surface — helped this along.
At the same time, there is little doubting the growing godlessness of the West, even by way of playing God with genetic cloning.
But what about the topmost leadership — and in particular that global superstar Vladimir Putin
For several years now, many have been mesmerized by his overt displays of devotion — 
wearing a medal, lighting candles in churches, kissing an image of Mary, dunking himself in literally ice-cold waters to mark the Epiphany. He has even lectured the West on its unchristian morals [left, from CTV News].
There is little question that Putin is of devout parentage and that his government has introduced laws and amendments to the criminal code that have cracked down on those who “insult religious freedom.” That the U.S. would do the same!
But it’s difficult to reconcile all this with what is currently afoot in that nuclear-tipped country. Putin is rattling the sabers of war. Recently he boasted with glee about 
a new and supposedly invincible nuclear missile — “Satan-2” — making clear how easily it could evade missile defenses and target a state such as Florida. (It can carry ten nuclear bombs.) And at the same time Russian operatives are attempting to interfere with West European and American culture, inserting “fake” news to cause division in masterful displays of social-media prowess.
In decades past, this alone would have caused there to be talk of war. How does Christianity fit with a missile named after the adversary of Jesus? “The Church is being perceived as an enforcement agency … a ministry which has the right to arrest people. And this is very bad,” claims Deacon Andrei Kuraev, who was a speechwriter for Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s predecessor.
And then there is the hot news of late: former spy after former spy dying in mysterious fashions, usually in England, where many expatriates head. There was a March 4 nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, England, on Sergei V. Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence, and his daughter, Yulia (prayer need).
This was followed days later by indications of strangulation of an Russian exile named Nikolai Glushkova in London.
England responded to the Skripal attack by expelling twenty-three Russia diplomats, in what is now a global hub-bub. 
There have been at least forty such unsolved Dr. Strangelove deaths of prominent Russians since 2014, inside and outside the country, including in Washington, D.C. Glushkova had ties to a journalist who was killed by a radioactive agent (polonium) a couple of years ago.
Russian dissident tycoon and former Kremlin powerbroker Boris Berezovsky – exiled Glushkov’s close friend – was found by police to have strangled himself five years ago at his home in Sunninghill, Berkshire. Others who have criticized Putin have met similar fate, especially journalists.
One gets the gist.
Vladimir Putin — candles or not, medals or not, icy water or whatever [left from Eyewitness News] — is a former KGB official who had the reputation, rightly or wrongly, of a killer.
Is he?
And if he is, one can say that perhaps the Russian people are glorifying Christ, but that their leaders (who usually define a nation) are not. Has there however been a massive conversion?
Russia under Mr. Putin, said Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague, an expert on Russia’s security services, “has given up on winning respect through soft power and is pursuing what I call ‘dark power.’”
Dark indeed.
[resources: Fatima Is Forever and Tower of Light]
[Footnote from the mail: “Dear Spirit Daily, several times in reporting about world events and seers’ prognostications about the future, you have linked to a site or article that purports that Russia in the end will triumph, NOT Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Russia has currently meddled in elections, hacked into our computers as well of other nations in the free world, invaded Ukraine with a land/power grab, has given North Korea, along with China, nuclear weaponry and rocket capability to reach the U.S. and Europe. Russia is eyeing meetings with Iran and other nations such as Venezuela that are hostile to America. Please do not link to any articles about Russia that portray that nation as ‘saintly’ or the savior of the world. Part of my family were killed or sent to Siberia from Ukraine during Stalin’s reign of terror. Please link to all articles asking all Catholics and Christians to pray the Rosary as Mary asked at Fatima. Sincerely, Anne Turner.”