in the campaign “Religious Frontier and the Fabrication of Historical Right (1550–1721)”
The government of the Tsardom of Muscovy used religious identity and the concept of protecting co-religionists as ideological cover for military expansion: historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that the diplomatic apparatus positioned the tsar as a "universal Christian ruler who 'upheld the true Christian faith'"[1], while invasions were motivated by a "divine obligation to rescue Orthodox Christians from infidel captivity"[1]; as a result, as historian Michael Khodarkovsky summarizes, in the advance into new territories "Moscow's military and political interests could no longer be separated from the ideological and theological rhetoric of expansion"[1], because of which the North Caucasus "became a religious frontier"[2].