A Note on Ukraine
I have chosen, on this platform, to remain silent regarding the events transpiring in Ukraine up to this point largely because I do not feel I have anything particularly intelligent to say about the subject. Others have and continue to be better commentators than I could possibly hope to be, and so I have contented myself to my own grumbling and the gestures of support that I have been capable of making. But after listening to a recent talk by Timothy Snyder on his Substack, Thinking about . . ., in which he makes a very convincing case that Russia is guilty of genocide, I must recognize that I am obligated to use even this insignificant platform to disavow these events and to point my readers in the direction of more sophisticated commentators whose perspectives I believe to be important. It is all too easy to look away and tell ourselves the situation is too distant or too complex to concern ourselves with or that it cannot really be as horrible as it seems. But one can hardly contemplate the death pits, torture chambers, mass rape, executions, and kidnapping of children and remain silent without incurring incredible moral guilt.
I think it is impossible for anyone unbiasedly paying attention not to recognize the evil of this war, and I find myself particularly disgusted by the total perversion of Christian images and rhetoric by Putin and his “patriarch,” Kirill, in the support of unspeakable violence. As Christians, we have an obligation to denounce this. For Orthodox Christians, among whom I am numbered, that obligation is immensely greater, as many of us are in the unhappy situation of being connected in one way or another to a church whose leadership no longer deserves to be called Christian. I feel particularly compelled to say this after encountering a number of Russian propaganda websites (and even Substack pages) in English clearly aimed at American Orthodox who might be gullible enough to fall for rhetoric of Putin’s “holy war” or Russia’s “new territories.”
This all having been said, here are a number of articles and resources that I believe anyone desirous of understanding this situation ought to consider. I would particularly recommend the aforementioned Substack of Timothy Snyder, whose calm and highly learned reflections on the situation have proven to be the most insightful I have found:
Timothy Snyder, Thinking about . . .:
Matthew Milliner on Putin and Kirill’s perversion of Christianity:
https://www.thebulwark.com/on-putins-outright-satanism/
https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/25/woman-of-peace-temple-of-war/
Some historical/religious background:
https://unherd.com/2022/02/putins-spiritual-destiny/
https://unherd.com/2022/02/kyiv-will-rise-again/
Finally, a UN report on war crimes committed in Ukraine, the vast majority of which were perpetrated by Russian troops. As a warning, the content here is extremely disturbing, and I frankly don’t recommend reading this unless one needs additional assurance that such crimes are in fact occurring: