Transfer of holy icon shows Russian Orthodoxy’s new sway under Putin

President Vladimir Putin's decision to move one of Russia's holiest icons from a museum to a Moscow cathedral highlights his growing reliance on the Church as the Ukraine war drags on, but has also raised fears about the safety of the fragile artifact.

Emphasizing its importance to the faithful, Putin last month ordered Andrei Rublev's "Trinity" be transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church from Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery for a year.

On Sunday, this year's Trinity Sunday, the 15th-century artwork will take its place in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a vast church that was blown up under Josef Stalin but rebuilt in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The transfer of Russia's most famous icon, which depicts the Oak of Mamre where the three angels visited Abraham in the Book of Genesis, underscores the extent to which politics and religion have...