Rusia

The war in Ukraine provides us with yet another opportunity to consider what might be done about the wars that continue to ravage the world.

The current Russian war of aggression is particularly horrific, featuring a massive military invasion of a smaller, weaker nation, threats of nuclear war, widespread war crimes, and imperial annexation. But, alas, this terrible war is but one small part of a history of violent conflict that has characterized thousands of years of human existence.

It has been the longstanding policy of the Moscow Patriarchate that the borders of what it calls its canonical territory are independent of any changes in the political borders within that space. As a result, it did not move to absorb Russian Orthodox churches in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after 2008 or in Ukraine’s Crimea after 2014.

Russia retaliated Monday for an attack on a critical bridge by unleashing its most widespread strikes against Ukraine in months, a lethal barrage that smashed civilian targets, knocked out power and water, shattered buildings and killed at least 14 people.

For all the recent talk that Russian President Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons to hold onto Ukrainian territory, Russia may have already begun hybrid warfare against Norway and northern Europe, especially Germany, to exploit Europe’s energy needs over the coming winter.

Ukrainians widely scoff at Moscow’s “Russian World” project, and often use the term derisively when describing the wholesale destruction wrought by Russia’s invasion of their country. Still education – and the teachers that shape the next generation of citizens – remains key to the fight for both sides.

Annexation and Mobilization Make Nuclear War More Likely

On September 30, following a series of sham referendums held in occupied territory in Ukraine, the Russian government declared that four Ukrainian regions were now officially part of Russia. The annexation came amid a “partial” Russian mobilization that is in fact rapidly becoming a large-scale one and that has left many Russians aghast and anxious. With these moves, the war in Ukraine has entered a new stage in which the stakes have risen drastically.