This might seem like a weird hill to die on, but I honestly cannot with the little, gold, Protestant crosses in all the fan art of Ilya Rozanov of Heated Rivalry fame.

ILYA IS RUSSIAN! HE WEARS A RUSSIAN CRUCIFIX!
Okay, Reid doesn’t specifically describe the appearance of the cross, but we’ve got some pretty clear indicators of what we’re dealing with here. In the first place, Reid specifically calls the item that Ilya wears a crucifix.
A gold chain hung crookedly around Rozanov’s neck, the shiny crucifix resting on his left clavicle just above the famous (ridiculous) tattoo of a snarling grizzly bear (“For Russia! I had it before playing for Bears!”) on his chest. (P. 8)
I could add more citations, because “crucifix” is used a lot, but the first instance (within the first ten pages) is probably sufficient.
By definition, a crucifix is “a representation of Christ on the cross” (thanks Merriam-Webster), so the plain Protestant cross is not it.

If you grew up in the West, you are probably familiar with the Catholic crucifix, which is typically not plain and simple.

Bare minimum, that’s what I would expect to see for Ilya. But no. Plain gold crosses all over the place.
If we’re really going to do our homework, though, we need to acknowledge that the Great Schism (a.k.a. The East-West Schism) occurred in 1054, less than two hundred years after the Christianization of Russia began, and only about a hundred years after the first ruler converted to Christianity. Russia was Christianized by eastern Christians, so Russian churches became Eastern Orthodox, not Roman Catholic. If you go to Russia in January, you will see Christmas trees because Christmas is celebrated on January 7, and the new year is celebrated the week after that.
The present-day composition of Russian religion according to a relatively recent poll cited by the U.S. State Department indicates 63% of the population identifies as Orthodox Christian, 7% as Muslim, and 26% as unaffiliated (which the CIA factbook notes is a legacy of decades of Soviet promotion of atheism). The Russian government recognizes Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as traditional religions. Ilya’s dad worked for the Minister of Internal Affairs, and knows the minister personally. He’s not some nobody, and the Russian government is still influenced by the Soviet government, in which success relied a lot on who you knew and how good a citizen you were. The probability of Mr. Rozanov marrying a woman who wasn’t a good Russian Orthodox woman is not high, both socially and just as a matter of basic statistical reasoning.
Ergo, Ilya wears a Russian crucifix.
The most noticeable elements of an Orthodox cross are the extra beams, one above the main crossbar and one nearer the base of the cross. So Ilya’s necklace should really look something like this:
But if drawing a full-on crucified Jesus in the fan art is too much (which…okay), then can we at least get the more basic version right?

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