MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to Orthodox believers and met Santa on the Russian Christmas Day Monday, as United States presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton claimed Putin had no soul.
"This festival has for centuries brought the light of faith, hope and love," Putin said in the Christmas message released by the Kremlin on the Orthodox Christmas day, January 7.
"It draws us towards primordial spiritual values uniting millions of people, values that play a special role in the history of Russia and nourish our national culture," Putin said.
The Russian president also met "Grandfather Frost" in the snow-covered northern town of Veliky Ustyug where the Russian variation of Father Christmas is thought to reside, and visited a theme park.
He left his designated successor Dmitri Medvedev to cultivate his presidential image at a televised Christmas mass in Moscow, presided by Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox church.
Putin has committed himself to the Orthodox faith despite his background in the KGB security service in the Soviet era, when Christianity was suppressed.
Dressed entirely in black, the Russian leader joined overnight Christmas ceremonies at a church in Veliky Ustyug, where the temperature was about minus 17 degrees Celsius (one degree Fahrenheit).
But as Russians and branches of the Orthodox faith in other countries celebrated Christmas, in the United States presidential candidate and former first lady Clinton made a cutting assessment of Putin's spirituality while campaigning in the state of New Hampshire.
Her remark that Putin had no soul came as she savaged President George W. Bush for his tactic of trying to forge warm personal bonds with foreign leaders.
"This is the president that looked into the soul of Putin, I could have told him, he was a KGB agent, by definition he doesn't have a soul, I mean this is a waste of time, right, this is nonsense," Clinton said at a rally.
Her comment reflected tense relations between Russia and the United States and came after a series of jibes against Putin by Republican candidate John McCain.
Christian belief was formally anathema to the Soviet state in the last century, although the dictator Joseph Stalin came to an accommodation with the Church during the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
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