The declaration came during a congress of the World Russian People's Council in which religious, political and cultural figures in the country met at the site of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a focal point for the Orthodox faith in Russia.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, also heads the council and is an ally of Putin. He has been criticized for providing a religious justification for the war and failing to unequivocally condemn the killing of people in Ukraine.

In February 2022, Patriarch Kirill said that Ukraine and Belarus were part of "Russian lands" and called the Ukrainians who were defending themselves against Russian aggression as "forces of evil," pitching the war as a battle for the future of Christianity.

"From a spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, are defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia," the document released on Wednesday said under the heading "special military operation," which is the official Kremlin term for the invasion.

It went on to claim that the war had the goal of "protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism."

Following the war, "the entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter the zone of Russia's exclusive influence," it said.

"The possibility of the existence of a Russophobic political regime hostile to Russia and its people on this territory, as well as a political regime controlled from an external center hostile to Russia, should be completely excluded," it added.