Russo-Ukrainian Crisis

[Josh]

From what I've heard, the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian Christians, which has been in bad shape for years since the annexation of the Crimea is really, really bad now.

This sounds like state-sponsored propaganda. Is the relationship somehow worse than it used to be?

So...I heard it from my Dad who might be many things but isn't state-sponsored propaganda. Prior to retirement, he worked for the Russian Evangelical Alliance (which is Baptist) and has frequently reported as a journalist on churches in Central and Eastern Europe. He currently lives in Kaliningrad and is still active in Baptist issues. He recently became a dual US-Russian citizen and I received an email this morning that he's in Minsk right now.

Here's a blog post he wrote about the current crisis:
https://www.wyoder.de/2022/01/18/regard ... n-ukraine/

My Dad is pro-Russia. If he was state-sponsored propaganda, he'd be Russian state-sponsored propaganda. I don't agree with him about everything.

After the annexation of the Crimea by Russia and the beginning of the Donbas War, my Dad expressed shock at the anger and enmity that Ukrainian Protestants and evangelicals felt towards Russia.

I mean, are you telling me that it's in worse shape than, say, the situation with Christianity in the U.S.S.R. was in the 1980s?

I'm talking about the relationships between Christians, not between Christians and the state. The situation for non-Orthodox Christians is not as bad as it was in the USSR in the 1980's, but they are still the subject of low-grade persecution through anti-evangelism laws and legal restrictions. It's the kind of stuff that you'd be calling out as persecution if it was happening in the US.

Sounds equivalent to the hatred from leftist Christians for Christians who are conservative, Trump voters, etc.

[Josh]

This is a thread to discuss the situation of Russian troops amassing at the border with Ukraine, as well as the response of Ukraine and NATO.
...
This thread is also a place to discuss how various professing Christians (both individuals and churches) respond to a situation like this.

It might be helpful to think of this conflict in terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time there were promises about the West (NATO) not expanding into the Soviet Bloc nations, this has been widely ignored and so Russia feels they have been wronged. The strategy they are persuing is in some ways similar to the response of the US to the formation of Soviet friendly states in the Americas, sort of a "not in my back yard" policy.

Responses:
1. This likely a good time to judge your feelings towards someone else's nationalism. What would you wish the response of the Russian church to be? How does that compare to the response of the American church in the 70's, 80's, 90's 2000's? We don't often get a chance to be on the other side of nationalist aggression, don't waste the opportunity to learn.
2. Start praying, dreaming and planning how to support the inevitable victims on both sides.

#1, the obvious answer is people need to be Anabaptists and stop being “patriotic”. Christianity is simply not compatible with going to war.

One of the ugliest examples of this was the Eritrean - Ethiopian war. Of course, look into war like that you’ll find communists or neoconservatives behind it.

[Ken]

Here's a map that shows more or less what we have been talking about. The only NATO expansion countries that actually border on Russia are Estonia and Latvia in the north. Ukraine and Belarus are the two large unlabeled grey countries in the lower right of the bottom map. A lot of the media reporting on this issue seems to be suggesting that Russia holds all the cards. I'm not sure that is the case at all.

Essentially they are demanding a rollback of NATO by threatening a non-NATO country. Why are they not threatening war against Estonia and Latvia? Because that would mean actual war with NATO. So Ukraine is kind of caught in the middle. But if you are trying to make the case to Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary that they are better off as neutral non-NATO nations then this is an odd way to make that case. It is the neutral non-NATO nation that is being threatened with invasion. And if you are trying to bring Ukraine back into the fold then threatening war also seems an odd way to make that case as well.

Clearly Russia wants to maintain that large grey buffer of Belarus and Ukraine between itself and the southern NATO nations. Which probably explains why Russia has been so insistent in propping up the Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko who by all reports lost the last election and is both extremely unpopular and brutal. The last thing Russia wants is an independent Belarus that might go in its own direction. And it is probably why they want to roll back the Ukrainian-nationalist government that has existed since the "Orange Revolution" tossed out Russia's corrupt and autocratic ally Viktor Yanukovych. And why the geopolitical aim of any Russian invasion would probably be to try to turn Ukraine back into a Russian puppet with a Russian-backed dictator like exists in Belarus.

Russia has a lot of military power on paper but they haven't really ever been tested against a modern military since WW2. And the country itself is rather weak economically. Other than petroleum and grain there is nothing really that Russia produces that the rest of the world actually wants. Where are the Russian iPhones or Russian cars or Russian tech companies? Russia's economy is actually smaller than those of Texas or Canada. It is a tiny fraction of the size of the US or the EU. A ruthless geopolitical approach by the west that didn't consider the human cost might actually want to see Russia get bogged down into a grinding stalemate of a war in Ukraine that would bleed blood and treasure from Russia for a decade or more and leave it drastically weakened economically and militarily. Russia earns most of its export dollars through Russian gas pipelines to the west which pass directly through Ukraine and a war would likely shut that down as Russian pipelines would be the most obvious target for any kind of nationalist Ukrainian resistance. I doubt Russia has enough troops to secure 1000 miles of pipeline against sabotage.

The Warsaw Pact as it existed in the top map is essentially the end-result of WW2 and where the Soviet armies wound up at the end of the war. That was always an artificial situation and never representative of the wishes of the people of any of those central European countries. Which were historically always more a part of Europe through the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and not a part of the Russian Empire. Those countries have always looked west and not east. But Ukraine and Belarus are a different situation. Neither of them have ever really been the same sort of independent European states like Poland or Hungary.

[Josh]

NATO has a lot of military power on paper but they haven't really ever been tested against a modern military since WW2.

America did manage to lose a war in Afghanistan against a couple of guys on camels herding goats.

[Ken]

NATO has a lot of military power on paper but they haven't really ever been tested against a modern military since WW2.

America did manage to lose a war in Afghanistan against a couple of guys on camels herding goats.

The same ones who beat the USSR when it was much stronger than today and which actually BORDERS Afghanistan.