Putin invades Ukraine

Putin invades Ukraine     

Ukraine has been attacked by Russia with a full-scale military invasion.   Ukraine has never been a military threat to Russia, and now Ukraine is doing what it can to defend itself.  Russian soldiers are dying because of this outrageous disaster.  People in Ukraine are fleeing to the west as their homes are bombed.  The world has seen the residential devastation on TV.  Outside agencies are documenting many war crimes by Russian soldiers.  Nations grieve, because Putin perceives Ukraine as an ideological threat, while he tells Russians monstrous lies about dealing with Nazis.

Putin chose an unprovoked war, which is a flagrant violation of international law, a violation of Ukraine’s independence, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity.  It’s unthinkable that in 2022, one man thinks he can decide what countries will exist and what peoples and cultures will be exterminated.  Putin threatened NATO nations with nuclear war if they decided to enforce a defensive ‘no-fly-zone’ over Ukraine.

The efforts of Ukraine to mature into a full democracy is a challenge to Putin’s old-style imperialistic dictatorship.   For years, Putin has created a web of lies to pacify and politically control the Russian people.  He characterized the Ukrainian Leadership as Nazis.  How wrong Putin is.  A Jewish Ukrainian family had four brothers, and three of them were murdered by the Nazis, and only one survived.  His grandson is now the President of Ukraine.  How dare Putin call Ukrainians Nazis.

Putin has created the typical ‘dictators trap’, where he has eliminated all counselling voices of reason.  He is even arresting ordinary Russian citizens in the street if they perhaps say anything that is not popular, and the videos of these arrests have been appalling. 

Putin calls his invasion a "special military operation" to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine.  He also called Ukraine a U.S. colony and a puppet regime, with no tradition of independent statehood.  That whole scenario is the most preposterous lie.  For Putin has been a liar from the beginning.  He was involved with Russian secret forces to blow up apartment buildings, to justify more Chechen war, which he used to stir up Russian nationalism to help place himself in the political centre in order to consolidate political power.  Many Russians knew what he was about, but did not want to hear it, and now they will suffer for years because of their complicity with their scheming madman.

Putin stole Crimea with manipulative subterfuge and violence.  He sent unmarked Russian soldiers into eastern Ukraine to lead a phony secessionist rebellion.  Meanwhile in Russia, Putin has created a Russian kleptocracy, where he is all-powerful in the style of the old Soviet empire.   Ukraine’s political aspirations of real freedom undermine Putin’s realm just by existing as an independent state.   By striving for something better, for true democratic freedom and prosperity for the average citizen, Ukraine has become Putin’s dangerous ideological rival.   For if Ukraine were to succeed in its decades-long push for democracy, the rule of law, and more European integration, then average Russians might ask “why not us too?”

Significant lies and disinformation are coming from Russia, especially on social media.   However, those who are witnessing the truth are seeing defenseless civilians targeted by Russian soldiers, so even grandparents are joining the fight.  Families with young children are sheltering in subway stations, and thousands are fleeing to the western borders.   These facts are heartbreaking and they expose the merciless human cost of Putin’s war.

Despite political differences, many nations are coming together in an international coalition to oppose Putin’s invasion, as seen in the strong vote denouncing Russia at the United Nations General Assembly.  The response of economic sanctions from Europe will hurt the Russian people and economies around the world.  Canada stands with the Ukrainian people, as now Russia has forfeited the right to take part in the global prosperity, that the world's democracies have built. 

While Ukrainian civilians learn how to make Molotov Cocktails to defend their homes, a Russian war machine is bombarding them.  Hundreds of missiles have been fired by Russia, and Russian tanks and troops are killing their way across the country, as desperate Ukrainians strongly defend their homeland.  Ukrainians are fighting back with some success.

Ukrainians are proud, and they never again will live with the Russian boot on their neck.  For many generations, Ukrainians knew little but tyranny and violence.  They endured two centuries of Russian tsarist autocracy which finally collapsed midst the cataclysm of the first world war.  A brief attempt at independence was quickly crushed by the Russian Red Army that re-established Russian rule.  Ukrainians then lived through the terrible Russian-made famine of the Holodomor, Stalinist terror, Nazi occupation and decades of soul-crushing Communist dictatorship.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, history seemed to guarantee that Ukrainians would again go down the path of brutal tyranny, for what else did they know?  But they chose differently.  Despite history, despite grinding poverty and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Ukrainians established a democracy.  In Ukraine, unlike in Russia and Belarus, opposition political candidates repeatedly replaced incumbents through elections. When faced with the threat of old-style autocracy in 2004 and 2013, Ukrainians twice rose in revolt to defend their newfound freedoms. Their democracy is a new thing for them and so is social peace.  Both are fragile, and must be defended.

Not content to manipulate and often terrorize the Russian people, President Putin is seeking to impose his tyranny on his peace-loving neighbours.  Putin has given speeches and TV appearances where he has revealed his mistaken distorted view of history, and his prejudicial attitude toward the Ukrainian people.  Putin has often described a false world view which the Russian media repeats, which tries to excuse the violence.  Based upon Putin’s myths about Ukraine, he is using war to pursue his unfounded resentments.  In launching this war, Russia has attacked the values and the international rules-based order, which are the foundations of all of the democracies of the world.  

Over the years, Putin has only stayed in power by murdering his political opponents, and using every lie and trick imaginable upon the Russian people.   Sadly, his war of aggression is the symptom that he is very desperate, to postpone the people’s desire for freedom, expand his dictatorship, and to preserve his evil power. There are no 'two sides' for excuses.  The evidence of the long story of Putin is a force of lying evil.

The war is an extension of the Soviet Union's long history of oppression of countries like Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.  They eventually won their freedom from Russia, but the battle for democracy did not conclude with the end of the Cold War.  Russian aggression is part of a broader global struggle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) only exists because of historical Russian belligerence.  Populations increasingly voted to join NATO as a defense against Russian imperialism.  NATO was not a western plot to eliminate Russia as Putin falsely claims, but a desire of nations to be protected from evil Russian regimes. 

Putin has always been deceitful, as he malevolently used the Russian Orthodox Church to get his way for Empire Building.  He totally controls the media to perpetuate his big deceptions.  Russian military forces must be defeated on the ground., but there is a longer-term spiritual battle for the Russian soul.  The big international lie, is that Putin’s invasion is against evil, satanic spirits, and Ukrainian Nazis who were created by American multinational corporations.  The war has a religious and cultural dimension, where the Ukrainian government is cast as a malignant tool of Satan, and also the degenerate Western forces.  The Russian takeover of Ukraine was to be the start of a great revival of the ancient Russian civilization, welcomed by its virtuous Slavic inhabitants, and a signal of precipitous decline for the decadent and doomed West.   Putin wants to recreate not the Soviet Union, but the mythical Russian Empire.  His methods are murderous, and his motives are a monstrous evil delusion.

Therefore, Putin’s invasion could be viewed as a spiritual battle.  Because on March 17th before a crowded stadium, Putin quoted the Bible for his manipulative purpose, and thereby brought condemnation upon the whole nation. Just like the devil himself who knows scripture, it seems that scripture fits Putin, as he blasphemed to the cheers of the nation he deceived.

(John 8:44  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.) 

It was chilling to watch the stadium event where people were so manipulated. They were led to cheer while at the same time, soldiers were bombing homes, hospitals, schools, and food storage buildings, to create a second Holodomor in Ukraine. The Russian army is not a liberator.  Ukraine is fighting for its freedom against a violent predator, as they strive to be liberated from generations of Russian lies and political violence. 

Many international news sources have been referenced or quoted to produce the narrative.