Putin's War

 Maybe history will record it as the War of Unintended Consequences.

The Ukrainian people won't care what it's called, just that it ended and they won.  It remains an ongoing disaster, but they have unbounded confidence that they will win.  But not before Putin tries to redefine the whole thing into a war against Russia, of all things.

Writing in The Atlantic on September 30, Anne Applebaum said, "Russia’s actions under these circumstances [those being Putin's recent sham annexation of four Ukrainian provinces] show contempt not only for international lawyers in European capitals, but also for Chinese politicians who like to talk about sovereignty and African diplomats who have agreed that borders matter, even when they are arbitrary. In the upside-down reality that Putin has created, he will now claim that Ukrainians, by defending their own land and their own people, are somehow attacking Russia [emphasis added].

Would he really make such a claim?

Well, the Ukrainians didn't waste any time testing that assertion when they blew up a very nice and crucial bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, which happened to be a major supply route for the Russian Army.

Putin reacted exactly as Applebaum predicted.  The Wall Street Journal reported on October 9 that:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his first public comments on the incident, blamed Ukraine and called it a “terrorist attack” aimed at civilian infrastructure.

“Its plotters, perpetrators, and masterminds are the Ukrainian security services,” Mr. Putin said Sunday in a televised recording of a meeting with his top federal investigative official.

Kyiv didn’t claim responsibility for the attack, though senior Ukrainian officials celebrated it on social media.

The nerve of those Ukrainian security services, daring to defend their country!

But then Putin decided to punish Ukrainian civilians with a massive rocket barrage designed to terrorize, kill, and maim.  According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “The occupiers cannot match us on the battlefield, and that is why they resort to such terrorism.” Mr. Zelensky said this as he stood near a crater left by a strike in Kyiv.

Putin impressed no one, and we suspect he is running out of friends.

In the WSJ report, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg condemned Russia’s “indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure,” writing on Twitter that the Western military alliance would continue supporting Kyiv “for as long as it takes.”

A spokesman for the EU’s foreign-policy chief called Russia’s attacks a war crime. “As always in such cases, the European Union recalls that all those responsible will be held accountable,” spokesman Peter Stano said.

And in Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said, “Your attacks provoke only rage and contempt in us! Not fear, not desire to negotiate.”

What a mess.  Even if Putin can pull this off, he has lost the hearts and minds of millions, not to mention their trust and respect.

Maybe they can replace his portrait in the Kremlin with something like this:

Go, Ukraine!

'Our captors asked us for songs'

The revised common lectionary this week includes two choices from the Book of Lamentations matched with Psalm 137.  We’re going with the selections from Habbukuk and the Gospel according to Luke, regarding faith, but the other readings are compelling in their own right.

In his commentary on the Psalms, James L. Mays writes that, while Psalm 137 is not one of the 'songs of Zion,' it is a song about Zion.  In songs of Zion, Jerusalem is majestic and invincible, secure against hostile threats and foreign armies.  In this psalm, Jerusalem has been flattened; the psalm is full of pain.

The psalm describes a particular time and place, and the theme is about remembering.  Linda Rondstat even sang a song quoting from the psalm:

The singers vowed not to forget but to remember Zion when they were in Babylon.  The psalm sings of resistance to one city and devotion to another.  And in the end, it also makes an appeal for retribution.

There is faith in our remembering.  Faith can never forget Jerusalem - see Luke 6:6-11 and compare it to Psalm 137:5.

Laments helped the people keep their relationship to Jerusalem alive, in the same way Christians remember Jesus at the Communion Table, to keep that relationship alive.  It's the same for anyone we remember after losing them.  Even Jesus lamented.  Few of us can get through life without some experience that challenges our faith.

Lamentations was written for a specific time and place: Israel’s exile to Babylon.  It was traumatic for the nation.  Families separated, the Temple destroyed; every-day life disrupted.  More than one prophet wrote about it, warned about, and, yes, lamented it.  After the Exodus event, the Exile was the next big thing and is remembered to this day, and for good reason.

How many exile-style events has the world experienced and lived through since the turn of the last century?  We can start with World War I (or, The War to End All Wars; missed that one by a mile), and then move on to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the German invasion of Poland; Soviet Russia’s response in eastern Europe; World War II in general; China in North Korea; the French and Americans in Indochina; the revolutionary upheavals in Central America; Lebanon; Syria; Somalia.  And our national lament: 9/11.

That’s just the big stuff.  It’s a long list.  We can add to it the Uighur genocide in China (also documented elsewhere on this blog) and Russia’s recent and ongoing aggression in Ukraine.

The Russians expected Ukraine to crumble.  It didn't happen, and Ukraine, with the help of the West, is fighting back.  Take that, bully.  But Russia (that is, Putin) won't go down easily, if at all.  They can rattle sabers with anyone too.  A new conscription callup may tip the balance in terms of numbers they can put on the battlefield, but Ukraine is proving to be a nimble force of resistance.

Ukraine can win.  Russia, thanks to Putin, can lose.  A lot.

In a world in perpetual pain, Scripture tells us to never forget, to never give in.  To lament for a time, but also to resist.  There is much for both free peoples and the oppressed to lament.

There is always hope and God is always at work in the world.