"For many years Putin has certainly had a close relationship with Archimandrite Tikhon, the Father Superior of Sretensky monastery. So close, in fact, is this relationship that there are those who would paint Tikhon as an éminence grise. Certainly Tikhon, a former film student, with a reputation as a spiritual healer seems to have served for some years as confessor to Putin. One biographer speculates that Tikhon probably knows more about Putin’s life than anyone else.[xix] He is also a priest with some rather remarkable political views, having publicly criticised democracy as a force that weakens a country and its spiritual basis, spoken out in favour of censorship as a necessary instrument and worked as a well–known public media figure. He has certainly seemed to profit from the relationship with Putin and other prominent political figures securing a string of new offices and promotions in recent years. However, he himself has always been keen to be clear that Putin is very much his own man, and certainly for all the closeness in their relationship Putin has stopped short (at least so far) of fully endorsing Tikhon’s model of Church–state relations. They did, however, work closely together in 2007 in the process of re–unifying the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and speculation over the extent of their influence on one another has continued for years.[xx]

Tikhon has reported in the past that Putin prays daily in a small chapel next to the presidential office. Putin’s mother and ex–wife were both certainly religious and the claim that Putin prays regularly is not implausible. As an overall picture of Putin’s personal faith then, while recognising the usual problems when it comes to unpicking truth from myth and managed public image, we can at the very least see that Putin wants to portray an image as a man with a committed personal faith.?

excerpt from : https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/02/16/essay-on-vladimir-putin