“To a certain extent, the rally shows how adept — at least so far — Mr. Putin has been at mixing religion and politics. It is well known that he relies heavily on the Russian Orthodox Church to bolster his support whenever he needs to draw public attention away from his country’s troubling economic and social ills. But Russia also has a large Muslim population — nearly one-sixth of its people are Muslim. Moscow alone has two million Muslim residents, and according to some estimates, an equal number of Muslim migrant workers. Mr. Putin wants to keep them in his camp, and this requires pragmatism and the utmost delicacy. The brutal war in Chechnya may have ended, but Islamist rebels, some of them professing loyalty to the Islamic State, still roam the Caucasus, and Moscow is fearful that their influence can easily spread northward.”

nytimes.com