[Asec] Putin's War against Ukraine: Reports of Courage and Fortitude

[Mark Elliott]

This from “*It’s impossible to come to the temple and pretend that nothing
happened*,” Meduza, March 8, 2022, and from “*Russian Priest Defends
Calling Ukraine Conflict a ‘War’* *after $330 Fine*,” Newsweek, March 19,
2022



Father Ioann Burdin, Church of the Resurrection, Karabanovo, Kostroma
Region:

“On February 25, I sat down and wrote a text, then I sent this text to
Father Georgi [Edelstein, Fr. Ioann’s mentor and predecessor at
Karabanovo]. He read it, shortened it and corrected it, after which we
published it on the [church] website.” [Meduza]



Fr. Ioann: “Life is very short, but there is an eternity where borders,
nationalities, who you were during your lifetime…will not matter…. If a
person is not touched by someone else’s pain and tears, then he is not a
Christian…. Now both Ukrainians and Russians are dying there [in Ukraine].
All of them are people.”



Fr. Ioann: “As a Christian, I open the gospel and look for the word
‘special operation’ [Putin’s required description for his invasion of
Ukraine]. There’s no such word. There is this word ‘war’ though. No one
speaks about special operations in the Bible.” [Newsweek]



This from “*One month into the Ukraine war*,” Washington Post, March 24,
2022



Andriy Spirin is just 18, but he is the dzvonar — the bellringer — at one
of Lviv’s oldest Orthodox churches. His duties used to be simple: ring the
church’s century-old bells on Saturday evening, Sunday morning and
holidays. At the request of Lviv’s city council, however, every dzvonar
must now ring their bells at 6 p.m. each day until the war is over.

For the new evening ritual, Spirin composed his own three-minute melody, a
somber tune he has titled “The Bell of Peace.”

“We ring these bells to call upon God,” he said as the winter sun dipped
past Lviv’s skyline of cupolas and clocktowers. “If the West won’t close
our skies, God will. Only He knows how long I will ring these bells. Only
He knows how long it will take for us to be victorious.”



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This from “*What do people detained in Russia at anti-war actions read,”*
Meduza, March 19, 2022



An estimated 15,000 Russian protesters against Putin’s war against Ukraine
are now in jail, many in a detention center on the outskirts of Moscow. An
opposition politician-teacher-linguist under arrest prepared a list of some
of the titles being read by detainees. Of the ten  titles described in this
article I found two particularly evocative:



Tyrkova-Williams, Ariadna. *On the Way to Freedom*. Moscow: Moscow School
of Political Studies, 2007.



“In her memoirs, one of the first female [1917 Revolution era] politicians
in Russia, a member of the Cadets [political party], tells about the tragic
path that led our country from the inert and archaic autocracy…to the
completely unimaginable horrors of the red dictatorship…. Its goal is to
understand why all the efforts of honest, self-sacrificing people…could not
lead Russia to parliamentarism and democracy. Needless to say, how painful
and topical these reflections sound today.”



Shulman, Ekaterina. *Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contacting
Reality*. Moscow: AST, 2018.



Russian political scientist Shulman’s observations “look today as a
nostalgic greeting from peaceful times, when the Russian regime seemed
deceptively toothless and herbivorous, and the future of the country was
peaceful, reliable and predictable.” The author’s musings “have not lost
their relevance, but, on the contrary, have been filled with some new
meaning. Thus, for example, an essay on ‘War in the Age of Feudalism’
describes the current situation long before it occurred with unpleasant
accuracy.”
-- 
Dr. Mark R. Elliott, Editor Emeritus
East-West Church Report
Asbury University
One Macklem Dr.
Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-2427
emark936 at gmail.com
www.eastwestreport.org
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