MOSCOW (AP) — The skinny dissident is thrown headfirst into a police van by camouflage-clad officers. Nearby, a dozen bearded men bearing Russian Orthodox crosses and wearing skull-and-crossbones T-shirts cheer on the cops.

It’s the latest flare-up in a growing feud pitting supporters of the influential church, which sees itself as the nation’s spiritual guide, against opponents who say the church has sold out to Vladimir Putin — becoming an arm of his regime more interested in gold than souls.

Roman Dobrokhotov was on his way to Christ the Savior Cathedral, Russia’s biggest church, to protest against the arrest of members of female punk rock band Pussy Riot. They were jailed in early March for belting out an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in front of the church’s gilded altar wearing garishly colored balaclavas.

The church’s leader, Patriarch Kirill, cried blasphemy. Critics claimed church-state collusion was keeping the women locked up.

Many say Putin, who returned to the presidency last week, has used the church as a potent tool in his command structure, allowing it to amass vast riches in return for unquestioning support of his policies and spiritual blessing for his leadership.

For more than a millennium, the church helped cement Russia’s identity and culture in times of foreign invasions and political upheaval — and that legacy remains strong in the hearts of millions of Russians.

Under the atheist Soviet regime, the church suffered persecution, with tens of thousands of its faithful purged, jailed or executed. The 1991 fall of communism opened the way for a renaissance that many celebrated as bringing Russia back to its spiritual roots.

But resentment slowly grew over the perception that church leaders were becoming Kremlin stooges.

Critics said slathering gold-leaf on church domes was ostentation shameful for a country suffering through the hard times of the Boris Yeltsin years. The church has acknowledged that it ran businesses dealing in alcohol, tobacco and oil, and operated jewelry stores and organic farms, to raise money for restoration of churches and monasteries and education of priests.

Suspicions grew further under Putin.

The church’s backing for the Kremlin became so fawning that it consecrated new nuclear missiles as “Russia’s guardian angels” and urged young Russians to volunteer for military service in Chechnya. Shortly before the Pussy Riot escapade, Kirill met with Putin and praised his two presidential terms as “God’s miracle.” In return, Putin said that “the state still owes much to the Church.”

The band said it performed its “punk prayer” inside the cathedral on Feb. 21 to protest Putin’s return to the Kremlin. They thrashed their heads and shouted: “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away!”

Three members were charged with hooliganism and face up to seven years in jail — severe even by the standards of a government notorious for crackdowns on dissent.

Protesters see Kirill’s influence in the harsh treatment. The bearded patriarch in a recent sermon described the punk performance as “devilish mockery” and part of a broader assault by “enemy forces” on the church.

The church maintains that desecration of icons and other acts of vandalism have become more frequent since the punk protest. As the patriarch led a procession around the cathedral, priests carried a crucifix and an icon that had been damaged in attacks elsewhere in Russia this spring.

Kirill himself is a focus of the growing opposition to the church.

The patriarch’s reputation has been tarnished by a pair of scandals involving a €30,000 ($38,832) Breguet watch he was seen wearing and a court case in which he sought 20 million rubles ($630,000) from a cancer-stricken neighbor — despite his monastic vows not to have any worldly possessions while serving the church.

And just as Putin is supported by gangs of youth thugs who intimidate his opponents, the church enjoys the backing of its own roaming enforcers of orthodoxy — tacitly approved of by church leaders. The bearded men who cheered Dobrokhotov’s arrest were members of the Orthodox Banner Bearers, a group that combines ultraconservative piety with bellicose acts reminiscent of extreme-right intimidation. They have gained notoriety for attacking gay rallies, tearing pop singer Madonna’s portrait, burning Harry Potter books and running a stake through a toy monkey to protest the teaching of Darwinism in schools.

The church gave its leader Leonid Simonovich-Nikshich one of the church’s highest awards, the medal of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said the church has turned into the Kremlin’s “Salvation Ministry,” obediently approving Kremlin policies and slamming Western democracy as concepts alien to Russian traditions — all the while enjoying hefty government donations and tax immunity.

“The Church inherited its full loyalty to the existing government from Soviet times,” Belkovsky said.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, the Church was a state institution whose government-paid clerics reported to czars as their “ultimate judges.” In the Soviet era, Orthodox leaders infamously declared their loyalty to the atheist regime to allow the church to keep operating — and were enlisted as KGB agents, according to lawmakers and prominent human rights advocates.

“We knew back in the early 1990s that 90 percent of church leaders had been KGB agents,” said Lev Ponomaryov, head of the respected For Human Rights group and a former lawmaker who in the early 1990s chaired a parliamentary commission that investigated Soviet-era ties between the church and KGB.

Despite the growing criticism over perceived sins past and present, there’s no questioning the church’s influence over Russian society.

The church claims 100 million Russians in its flock — more than three-quarters of the nation’s population — though polls suggest that less than 5 percent of them are devout churchgoers. More than a spiritual guide, many Russians look to the church as a symbol of their identity.

Some believers applaud the Pussy Riot arrest.

“It’s very good that they were jailed, because otherwise some fanatics would simply tear them apart,” said Natalya Dolina, a 55-year-old historian and churchgoer from Moscow. “They soiled a church; they fouled icons that are dear to many. They are devoid of talent; they just latch onto a trend.”

But believers such as Lidya Moniava, who manages children’s hospices at a charity fund in Moscow, asked Kirill in a web-posted plea to forgive the pranksters and facilitate their release — and thousands joined her petition.

A Church spokesman said, however, that the Church will forgive the punk rockers only if they “repent and change their lives.”

Several Orthodox priests declined to be interviewed for this story, saying they feared reprimands or were not allowed contact with a non-Russian news agency.

Many non-religious Russians found the prank tactless, but were shocked by the arrest and possible punishment.

“They should have gotten those girls out of the church — and left it at that,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Russia’s most prominent human rights activist who considers herself non-practicing Orthodox.

MOSCOW (AP) — An opposition activist was detained and beaten Sunday after he tried to enter Moscow’s landmark Christ the Savior Cathedral to pray to deliver Russia from Vladimir Putin.

Several riot police officers forced Roman Dobrokhotov into a police car just meters (feet) from Russia’s largest church, widely seen as a symbol of resurgent Orthodox Christianity after seven decades of atheist Communist rule. Dobrokhotov, who leads a small anti-Kremlin youth movement, heckled President Dmitry Medvedev during his speech in the Kremlin in 2008.

Forest fires raged across Russia on Friday, destroying villages, surrounding one southern city and killing at least 25 people, including three firefighters. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin consoled survivors at one smoldering village and urged officials to redouble their efforts against the blazes.

The fires have spread quickly across more than 200,000 acres (90,000 hectares) in recent days after a record heat wave and severe drought. July has been the hottest month in Moscow in 130 years of recorded history. Fields and forests have dried up, and much of this year’s wheat harvest has been ruined.

A leading Russian newspaper reported Friday that one of the two female suicide bombers who attacked Moscow’s subway was the 17-year-old widow of a slain Islamist rebel from the North Caucasus.

Russia’s security chief said that unnamed militants from the volatile southern region carried out Monday’s twin bombings, which killed 39 people and injured about 90.

The Kommersant reported that perpetrators came from Dagestan and Chechnya, two neighboring predominantly Muslim provinces in the North Caucasus.