Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,21 Jan 2001,12 mins

Putin hands out state decorations to clerics

Reporting Religion

Available for over a year

The Russian President handed out medals and spoke without irony of the merits of religion. Are we seeing a return to the Tsarist era when the Church was the handmaiden of the state? Also on the programme: women in Kuwait protest as once again they're denied political rights and after an anti-Semitic law in the English city of Leicester is renounced, why aren't the Jews there celebrating?

Programme Website
More episodes