All this week, Glenn is taking viewers on a journey to explore one of the biggest geopolitical threats to America: Russia and Vladimir Putin. In addition to the research for each segment, Glenn is also making the transcripts and key highlights from the episode available on GlennBeck.com.

Tonight, I’m going to show you what’s coming in the next 12 or 15, 24 months, what’s over the horizon. This one is truly, truly horrifying. The information that is fed to you by politicians or the mainstream media or, God forbid, the think tanks never take us beyond the surface view. I believe it is critical to attack an issue on a much deeper level, pull it up from the roots like a weed. If you don’t, if you don’t get at the roots, the problems will continue to resurface time and time again, and you will see that what I’m going to show you tonight has repeated itself.

History is repeating itself right now. It was Aristotle that said it, and then history repeated itself, and Edmund Burke said it. And then history repeated itself, and then Winston Churchill. And depending on what time period you were born in, everybody always says…my generation, it’s Winston Churchill. It started with Aristotle. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. If you don’t know history, you certainly won’t know the future.

The next three episodes we are going to show you what is going on with Russia, and I’m going to show you tonight, history. I’m going to try to answer these three things and show you these three things, that Russia is awake and rising and not to be messed with. Two, is it communist? Is it fascist? Is it religious? What is it? And three, when did this all start?

And this really kind of goes back to history. It’s a disturbing driving force behind their aggressive geopolitical aims and how it relates directly to you, because it does. But let me go into short-term history, because really it all goes back to this chalkboard which was the last year of my show on FOX, this chalkboard which caused me probably to lose more credibility than anything I’ve ever done. People said this was madness.

This was the caliphate. Did you notice that it was the cyber caliphate that hacked into the president’s speech and into our global systems today? It was the cyber caliphate. That’s this chalkboard. Well, we’re past the caliphate now. We are now to this point: radicals, Islamists, Communists, Socialists will work together against Israel…past it. Work together against capitalism…we’re there now. Work together to overturn stability…we’re there.

The protests become contagious. They cascade. They sweep the Middle East…past this. Begin to destabilize Europe…you’re now seeing this. And the rest of the world…this is where we are at tonight. We are going to show you this part. We’re going to show you in the next three days. Episode two, you’re going to meet Putin’s idea man, the architect designing maneuvers that we’re currently seeing play out in the international stage, and it is incredible once you know what he’s doing to see it all laid out on a table and what the signs point to, a rising red storm, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades, and this time they’re playing for keeps.

But for it to all really crystallize, you have to take Edmund Burke’s advice. We have to learn the history first, the impetus of Russia’s recent international escalations. They go much deeper than merely a maniacal shirtless dictator who hunts sharks with his bare hands. I mean, that makes for good click bait, you know, and Putin’s machismo may be a, you know, good enough storyline to satisfy the casual observer, but I will tell you, as I talked about this show on my Facebook page, I actually had people in our audience say well, I like Putin better than I like President Obama. I like him because at least he’s doing something.

Oh, be careful. Putin is not just the self-absorbed thug the media portrays. His tactics are far more calculated than the average wannabe dictator, and his goals are far, far reaching. The brash military overreaches from the annexing of the Crimea to the pro-Russian militants who shot down MH-17, that’s just about Putin flexing his biceps for the rest of the world to see, but there is a deeply historical and deeply disturbing pattern that is playing out that reveals the endgame and opens Pandora’s Box almost quite literally of biblical proportions.

Tonight, we begin a three-day episode on the root of Russia’s coming red storm which went from 0 to 60 since Putin’s reelection in just the past year. Watch.

So the question is why? Why Ukraine? Why is this happening? What is his end goal? There’s also some disturbing news that came out last weekend about the anti-homosexual agenda in Russia that we will touch on here in just a few minutes and also what’s happening in France.

Now, prior to these aggressions, even the mere mention of Russia as a geopolitical foe or a geopolitical force was met with mockery. Remember?

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President Obama: Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda. You said Russia, and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, you know, the Cold War has been over for 20 years.

Okay, this might have been amusing. The audience laughed. The line about the 1980s made people laugh but really only those people whose knowledge of Russia begins and ends with Rocky IV. The plain reality is and has been there is no humor in such a stunning display of ignorance. Dismissing the ambitions of what Putin has declared the new Russia without carefully examining what does he mean by “that could have disastrous consequences”?

What is Putin’s new Russia? What does it look like? Well, the best place to help make sense of what’s happening now, again, is history. Most people would trace the Western and Russia conflict back to the mid-1940s. World War II had concluded, and most nations were now focusing on how to reconcile, reconcile with this guy, Stalin.

I love this. This is actually a model of a very famous sculpture for Stalin from the Soviet Union after he died, and I love this because it looks like he was in a straitjacket, and that’s where this crazy man belonged, a straitjacket. Stalin’s Soviet Union, that was a scary place. One of the highest profile points of the dispute in the creation of the World Bank and the IMF is where we really started to see this conflict.

The U.S. played a leading role because leaders believed at the time the IMF, the institutions, the banking institutions would help prevent another Great Depression from happening and another great world war. Those things were on the high priority list, but Stalin refused to go along with it. Well, this confused so many people, because FDR had openly spoken of the spirit of friendliness and cooperation with Stalin.

FDR admired Stalin. People thought Communism was neat and affectionately referred to Stalin as Uncle Joe. That’s what FDR used to call him. Stalin’s refusal to help prompted U.S. officials to start digging around and find out what is the deal with Stalin? Why isn’t he our partner? Why won’t he help on this? This is important. This is good for both of us.

Well, officials reached out to a U.S. diplomat named George Kennan. He was the head of the mission in Moscow. Kennan didn’t share FDR’s rosy view of the communist leadership and the Soviet Union. He knew what killers they were. He believed FDR’s fondness for Stalin was wildly misplaced. His response to Stalin’s request was stunning. He wrote it on February 22, 1946, and instead of a simple reply, Kennan unleashed a five-part, 8,000 word missive that would later be known as the Long Telegram.

In it, he pulled no punches. He explained, “I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of oversimplification.” Stalin’s unwillingness to help over some random policy hang-up was bothersome to people, but there were serious problems. It wasn’t just bothersome. It was serious, and Kennan explained in an article published in Foreign Affairs in 1947.

He called it the Sources of the Soviet Conflict, and here’s what he said: “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Got it? “Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the…application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points; corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”

What does that mean? It means you’re going to have to contain them, and they’re going to continue to try to get out of that box, and you’re going to have to continue to move. The solution? Take steps; block him at his expansion anywhere possible. So, who is Kennan? Kennan is now known as the father of containment. His message was the cornerstone of our Cold War policy against the Soviet Union, contain them at all costs.

Now, that’s when it’s commonly believed that it all started, competition born out of the ashes of World War II because of this guy. That is ridiculous. It doesn’t. It goes much, much deeper than that, and our researchers have now worked for four months on this program to try to show you. And this is going to be a lot of really heavy stuff to try to jam down in a, you know, an hour-long show, but all of these notes will be up at GlennBeck.com. You’ll be able to see this. You can watch it at will, but this is critical that you understand this, because this is the root.

Gotta take you back over 1,000 years to the split of the Roman Empire. Split of the Roman Empire in the late 1700s, the government power structure was in Constantinople, here. The religious center remained in Rome. Now, here’s how the power structure was divided at the time. There was the Eastern Roman Empire. The government was run, Constantinople, which was famous for its defense and large number of soldiers there.

Culture was heavily influenced by the Greeks, connected to the Byzantine Empire, the language, the customs, and everything else, and that’s all Hellenization comes from here. Gradually they move away from the Latin language, and they’re increasingly alienating themselves to Western Rome and the pope. The pope was based in Rome. That brings us to Western Rome.

The Christian pope based there in Rome became more and more alienated as they maintained allegiance to the pope. In the time of conquer or be conquered, Rome was a sitting duck because all of the troops were Byzantine. All of the troops were in Constantinople, and they were there to protect the pope, but the pope was in Rome. All of the defenses in Eastern, all of the spiritual in Western…that’s the way it was in the beginning and only a matter of time before somebody took advantage of the opportunity and attempted to take down Western Rome, because the pope was like a king at the time.

At the time, it was common for barbarian tribes to attack various targets. There was a tribe called the Lombards. They saw the Byzantine troops were spread too thin. They were all around Constantinople, and where they were, there was no real army, so they decided to take a chance, and they invaded what is now known as modern-day Italy with the intention of conquering and ruling Rome.

Well, the Byzantines were tied up in various other battles. They didn’t have the resources to protect them. Desperate, the pope turned to somebody else, to Charlemagne. Charlemagne was the new king of the Frankish Empire. He agreed to help the pope, so Charlemagne comes in, and he swoops down, and he crushes the Lombards. He liberates Rome but in turn also ended up uniting most of Western Europe.

Christmas day, year 800, Pope Leo III is sitting on his throne. He crowns Charlemagne emperor, and his empire would stretch as far east as the Slavic lands, and this is really important, Charlemagne all the way over here. Let me show you a look. This is Charlemagne’s Europe. If you see, the Slavics to Charlemagne, that is the orange up here. The gray or the brown down here, that’s the caliphate. I’m telling you, this is all playing out now, the caliphate at the bottom, the Byzantine Empire, the Slavic Empire, and then the West.

Now, let me show you another map, the Cold War. Do you notice the division of power in Charlemagne’s Europe and Cold War Europe is nearly identical? After Charlemagne’s death, his empire was split among his sons. France and Germany’s beginnings stem from this moment, and from here on out, Rome is the spiritual center, and Carolingian Christianity would dominate Western Europe. The way the region is constructed today stems from this, this ancient division.

Understanding this helps make sense of what is happening there today, because…do we have the new map? The world today…Ukraine, what’s happening in Ukraine? Some of Russia’s seemingly strange actions that had most Americans and most people around the world going what the heck? What does he care about that? If you know the past, you will know the future.

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All right, so how does Charlemagne and his rescuing of Western Rome over 1,000 years ago matter to anybody today? It’s all about values or the stated values. I want you to look closely at what Putin values in his new Russia. There has been a trend now of events that indicate Russia is attempting to be one of the highest profile international defenders of global Orthodox Christianity.

Religion is playing a role, and pay attention here. It’s all about religion, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany at the very beginning before he really seized power. He cloaked himself as a defender of all that is good and decent and Christian.

You’ll recall that it was Vladimir Putin who beat Obama to the national stage when denouncing the violence against Christians in the Middle East. Remember? We looked like we were cowards. All of a sudden he was defending, and he said, “This pressing problem should be a subject of close attention for the entire international community. It is especially important today to make efforts to prevent intercultural and interreligious conflicts, which are fraught with the most serious upheavals.”

Well, everybody loves that, right? Except that’s a little strange, considering that the guy kills journalists. Journalists in Russia who pen a negative word about politicians, especially Putin, find themselves victims of freak accidents like falling out of a nine-story window, falling into an elevator shaft, suddenly being stabbed and thrown off a roof, consuming poison-laced drinks. That doesn’t exactly square with good Christian tenets, does it?

Nevertheless, the pattern is now here. Putin himself was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. He had a high-profile meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2002. I want you to know, I am not claiming that he is a religious guy at all, but I am telling you that he has made strong religious allies, such as one powerful bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow.

Leading up to the Olympics, Russia championed the fight against what they deemed as the West’s slide into immorality and greed, critical to pay attention to, most notably taking an overzealous opposition to the pro-gay activist movement. I talked about this two years ago on CNN because I found this abhorrent at the time, and it has only gotten worse. Watch.

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Glenn: I said on the air this week I will stand with GLAAD. I will stand with any, anybody who will stand up and say that’s crazy, that’s dangerous, that’s hetero-Fascism. That’s what that is. And we’re talking about Duck Dynasty? Really? Really?

Really important…he banned gay propaganda, and here he is defending this law. Watch.

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Vladimir Putin: Two is that I’d like to ask our colleagues, my colleagues and friends, that as they try to criticize us, they would do well to set their own house in order first. I did say, after all, and this is public knowledge, that in some of the states in the U.S., homosexuality remains a felony.

Okay, this is not actual Christianity. Putin is attempting to appeal to his Orthodox core of the country. Why? Because he knows trouble is coming, and he’s got to cobble together an army, and it appears to be working. Russia has aggressively sought far right allies wherever he can get them, and if you don’t pay attention to what the history is and what he’s really doing, you might think I’ve looked into pooty-Put’s eyes, he’s a good guy.

There is one disturbing partnership with a group called the World Congress of Families. I know very little about this group. I don’t think they’re a bad group. They are very pro-family, but they are not doing what Putin is doing. And this group has a lot of well-known Christian organizations among its partners. Again, seems to be a good group.

They were set to have a conference in Moscow until the military conflicts with Ukraine forced cancellation, and sanctions by the U.S. then forced the WFC to suspend their partnership, but it seems to me, and this is only one group, that there are groups around the world that have bought Russia’s salesmanship that they are the new global champion of Christianity.

I warn you, be careful. Let me give you a quote. “Now Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.” That one comes from Putin’s favorite businessman, a 40-year-old multimillionaire who recently started the Charitable Foundation of St. Basil the Great, $42 million. The charity became one of WCF’s official partners at a similar conference.

He did a talk on traditional values, the future of the European principles, and said “Civilization is on the verge of deconstruction, and only Russia can become a center of consolidation of all the healthy forces and resistance to the sodomization of the world, that is why the whole Europe is looking at it with hope.” I am telling you that our multiculturalism, our lack of any values, is leading us to exactly the same place Western Europe was in in the 1930s.

Examples of Putin attempting to appeal to the Orthodox Church: Moscow State University received the largest scientific grant ever, $19 million, to fund a project called Noah’s Ark, the case against an all-female punk rock band, Pussy Riot, who was charged with the severe crime of doing a performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It was wildly, wildly inappropriate. It was vile, yes, but these women got seven years in prison, and people cheered Putin on.

The pattern is very clear, and it begs the question why? This is not a religious guy. Why is he doing this? Why is Russia attempting to become the so-called voice of the Orthodox Church? The disturbing answer comes from history when we come back.

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The world is on a collision course, and we have to find out what the root of this is and what comes next. When Vladimir Putin first got into office, he described himself, and he was described by everybody as a pragmatist. He was a secular nationalist whose religious stances were separate from how he governed. He didn’t really care.

We just showed you he’s going at 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Why? Well, let’s start where it really started to happen with him, the economic crash of ’08. It caused major economic pain, and Putin’s popularity began to slip. So, what did he do? He had to appeal to the nationalism of his people and also to the religious aspect to garner popularity. It worked in his first term, but the downturn has taken that option off the table now, and the Kremlin’s new plan is a dangerous concoction of anti-Western sentiment, Islamic xenophobia which you’re going to see play out in the West, and we’ll tell you about that tomorrow, and Orthodox Christianity.

So, all of a sudden this guy is becoming a religious leader. Well, has he had a come-to-Jesus moment? No, not in his faith, but he has come to Jesus as the best weapon at his disposal to keep people in the palm of his hand. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Now, what makes him think that will work? History, again…that’s what tonight’s episode is about, but you have to go further back than Rome. You have to go all the way back to the Roman Empire, passed that to the days with Jesus and his disciples.

The Apostle Paul, we know he went west towards Rome to preach, but meanwhile, Ukrainian historical accounts claim the Apostle Andrew had preaching that took him north over the Black Sea and even further north along the Dnieper River, all the way making converts to Christ. The name of the cities he visited, you have become reacquainted with in the news lately thanks to Vladimir Putin, Crimea and Kiev. As you will see, Crimea plays a very important role.

It was in Kiev where Andrew first predicted a great Christian city would someday arise. Some 800 years later, the prediction would appear to come true when Prince Oleg of the Rus arrived. He landed precisely where Andrew made his prediction, and today in that exact spot stands this, St. Andrews Church.

Now, for the Kievan Rus, the new location proved fruitful, made them incredibly powerful, even more powerful or powerful enough to attack Constantinople on multiple occasions. So, now it was the Byzantines. The Byzantines with all their power and their troops, they were sitting ducks and outgunned and out of options. The Byzantines found a different way. They thought we will fight a different way. We’ll fight by culture.

A Byzantine monk named Cyril developed a written language and translated the Bible and other Byzantine prayers. The Christianization of the Slavs had begun. By the way, Cyril, Cyrillic language, if you see above on our set, that is the language of Russia. They’re still using it today.

In 988, Vladimir the Great…Vladimir Putin? No, Vladimir the Great, in 988 was baptized in Crimea, and Kievan Rus became a Christian state. Just as Rome was the spiritual center of the Western Europeans, this became the Christian center. Is Ukraine and why he is paying so much attention to it, why he wants Ukraine and Crimea so important to him? Why does he want it? Because it is the center of Christianity for the Rus.

In the mid-1400s, Ivan the Great began a campaign once again to unite all of the Rus under one banner. Ivan may have been the first Russian ruler to realize the power and influence of Orthodox Christianity and what it had on the Rus. Knowing that this had real power, he commissioned the building of the Kremlin, and in the middle of the fortress, he placed the Assumption Cathedral of Moscow.

It was the grandest Orthodox Church in all of Rus’ lands at the time, and it still stands there right in the middle of the Kremlin. In fact, you go to the Kremlin for a tour today, they pretty much bypass all of the Cold War stuff. They take you right here, the United Rus. Ivan the Great, he united the Rus, and he conquered the mongrels and forged a Russian Empire. With him, the entire way was Orthodox Church.

Ivan declared Russia the third Rome. He adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle as the official symbol of Russia, and it still is the coat of arms in Russia, a constant reminder to all Russians of their responsibility as a successor to the Byzantines. Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodoxy would become fused into the DNA of every single Russia, deep in their roots, and places such as Kiev and Crimea peninsula, they are considered the holy sites. In fact, we just heard a speech from Putin just a couple of months ago where he said that that is as important to the Russian people as Jerusalem is to the Jewish people.

The legitimacy of that place traces all the way back to the apostle of Jesus. When the Byzantine Empire effectively collapsed, the Russians saw it as their holy succession to establish the third Rome. The Russian Orthodox Church provided divine legitimacy for Russia. The medieval Iron Curtain line was drawn.

The Roman Catholic Church officially split from the Eastern Orthodox Church. Western Europe continued to look to Charlemagne and France as their protector and leader. Eastern Europe looked to Russia as their champion and preserver of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. That’s what’s happening. He is now saying that West and the Western Christianity has failed the world. We need to restart Eastern orthodoxy, and it will save the world.

Russian nationalism, it has always centered on the Orthodox Christian Church, and this is the power that Putin is after. It’s the Holy Grail. This fracture in history is critical to understand, because an ongoing dispute in the region is not about anything other than who’s going to be the third Rome, the modern-day successor of ancient Rome. Putin is talking about it in speeches now.

The offspring of this divide, both believe they are the rightful successor. Putin is appealing to the historic roots of the Russian people when he aligns himself with Russian orthodoxy. He is rallying them to a greater call than just his power, just his ego, just to oil or anything else. He’s calling them back to God. And it wasn’t until the dawn of the 20^th century that a certain leader there tried to change the Russian struggle from cultural to class, but the root of this conflict began over 1,000 years ago, and now the bare-chested Putin is posed to claim the mantle of orthodoxy, the centuries-old, tried-and-true way to stoke nationalism.

Why is it that the media is so afraid of people like me or people, anybody on the right? Because they will always say anybody who calls for nationalism and religion you should run from. No, do your own homework. This should send a chill down the spine of every living human being on planet Earth, because the red storm is just beginning to rise.