What is the key that unlocks Putin’s motives for this devastation of a country which is full of Russians in Eastern Ukraine? We know where to look—the Word of God! Here we learn that the key is to appreciate it is a religious war that Putin is fighting; a Crusade to bring back his people into the Empire that existed for centuries, but crumbled in the events of World War I. That was a significant time period because this was the key event that opened up the Middle East from under the control of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, enabling the Jews to return to their homeland and the countries of the Middle East to gain their independence. It sets the scene for the final act in the Kingdom of Men, where nations divide into two camps, those in support of Israel and those against. We are witnessing the final stages of the completion of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image!
Scriptural and Historical background to Ukraine and Russia.
Genesis Ch. 10 is a good starting point, giving us the Table of Nations—the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s children. Japheth was actually the eldest (10:21) though listed last, followed by Shem and Ham. It is Japheth’s seven children that we are interested in, listed in verse 2.
Many of these sons we recognise from the list of nations that come against Israel in Ezekiel 38:2, 5, 6. Gomer, Magog, Madai (= Medes—Persia), Tubal and Meshech. There is no mention of Javan, but what of Tiras?
“Tiras settled in the vicinity of what is now called Constantinople, in Europe, and from him the Thracians descended, and that country was anciently called Thrace” (McKinstry The World’s Great Empires).
From here they moved northwards giving their name to the River Tyras—now the Dniester—and its chief city on the river, Tiraspol. This was the area of the Scythians, whom Byzantine chroniclers termed the Tauro-Scythia or the Tauri.
The Russian historian Gregov remarks:
“Kiev Rus was for a long time known among the Greeks as Scythia or Tauro-Scythia … these Tauro-Scythians call themselves Rus.”
Kievan-Rus—the first Russian State
Rosh/Ros/Rus is the ancient name for Russia. Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed.) states, “the name ‘Russia’ is derived through Rossiya from Slavonic Rus or Ros.” Gesenius, the 18th century German scholar, and Hebrew specialist, said of Rosh “a proper noun of a northern nation, undoubtedly the Russians.” Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (Vol. 7 p. 80) states, “that among the Greeks, the national appellation (for the Russians) had a singular Ros.” We trace them back to Japheth’s youngest son the ending of whose name, Tiras, possibly providing the origin of Rus.
The descendants of Tiras settled in the region of today’s Ukraine and Crimea, and the Russian nation of today takes its origin from this region.
We trace Russian history from the events of the ninth century. Kiev was conquered in around 882 by Prince Oleg of Novgorod (way to the north of Kiev) and founded the state of Kievan Rus. Some historians describe it not so much as a conquest but a merging of the two great cities. It became a flourishing centre.
Oleg was succeeded by Grand Prince Igor, who, according to Dukes, “Soviet historians look upon as the ‘true beginning of the Russian princely line.’ ”
His widow Olga succeeded him and the state flourished. She maintained a strong link to Constantinople and was “converted to Christianity.”
Olga’s son remained a pagan, but it was through the “baptism” of his own son, Vladimir, in around 988 that the Orthodox Church came to be the State religion of this region. Vladimir had sent envoys to study the religions of the surrounding nations, and they had been most impressed by the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. He agreed to be “baptised” and this took place in Crimea, and returning home, had his subjects “baptised” in the Dnieper River that runs through Kiev. He swept away the pagan temples and started building churches!
By the mid-eleventh century, Kievan Rus was “the biggest and strongest state in Europe” according to the Soviet historian Grekov. The Orthodox Church played an important role in its development.
Under pressure from the Mongols under Genghis Khan, the state of Kievan Rus was broken up, its rulers and priests barbarously tortured and Kiev was sacked in 1240.
Kiev’s Russian inhabitants were forced northwards, and Moscow began to grow in importance. Our first reference to Moscow occurs in 1137; by the 14th century it became the centre of the Russian nation. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the centre of Orthodox Christianity now flourished in Russia under Ivan III.
“In 1462 Moscow had become the political as well as the religious centre of the Russian lands” (Paul Dukes A History of Russia).
“It was a period in which the basic territory of Russia was welded into a single state and completely liberated from the Tatar yoke, and in which the political foundations of that state took shape” (Smirnov A Short History of the USSR).
Crimea, a fateful gift!
Russia came under the rule of the Tsars until the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Emperor, and his family in 1918. Vladimir Lenin began to impose a Communist system on Russia’s possessions. Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 until his death in 1952. A year later Nikita Khrushchev was in power, denouncing many of Stalin’s purges as he tried to usher in a less repressive rule. As part of his reforms, he restored Crimea which was part of the Soviet Union back to the control of Ukraine. The gift was in honour of the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyastav, when in 1654, Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire. It was a nominal gift because they were all part of the Soviet Union. Yet less than 40 years later, the Soviet Union crumbled and Ukraine with Crimea gained their independence. Russia then had to pay Ukraine for the use of her naval facilities in Crimea!
Putin seeks to rectify past “mistakes”
When we said earlier that religion is the key to Putin’s actions, we can appreciate how important Ukraine is in his eyes. This is where the Russian religion began under Vladimir (“of great power” or “ruler of the world”) the Great. Vladimir Putin wrote a 5,000-word essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
In one particularly ominous passage, he openly questions the legitimacy of Ukraine’s borders and argues that much of modern-day Ukraine occupies historical Russian lands, before stating matter of factually, “Russia was robbed.” Elsewhere, he hints at a fresh annexation of Ukrainian territory, claiming, “I am becoming more and more convinced of this: Kyiv simply does not need Donbas.”
Putin ends his lengthy treatise by appearing to suggest that Ukrainian statehood itself ultimately depends on Moscow’s consent, declaring, “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia” (Peter Dickenson, Atlantic Council 15-Jul-21).
Putin regards his life’s mission is to rectify that “geopolitical catastrophe” of the Soviet Union’s collapse. He models himself on Tsar Peter the Great and upon Catherine the Great, who in 1783 annexed Crimea from Ottoman control. In subsequent wars she brought most of Ukraine back under Russian control.
Upon regaining control of Crimea in 2014, Vladimir Putin had erected in Moscow, close to the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, an imposing statue of Vladimir the Great, who brought the Orthodox religion to his people. Unveiled in 2016, Putin declared in his unveiling speech:
“This new monument, is a tribute of respect to our distinguished ancestor, an especially revered saint, statesman and warrior, and spiritual founder of the Russian state.”
“Prince Vladimir has forever entered into history as a gatherer and protector of the Russian lands, as a visionary politician, having created the foundation for a strong, united, centralized state, thus incorporating various peoples, tongues, cultures, and religions into one great family.
His era knew many achievements, the most important and pivotal of them being the Baptism of Rus’. This choice became the common spiritual fountain for the peoples of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and laid the foundation of moral values which define our lives even till now.
Precisely this sturdy moral support, cohesion, and unity helped our ancestors overcome difficulties, and live and triumph for the glory of the Fatherland, strengthening from generation to generation its power and greatness.
And today our duty is to stand together against modern challenges and threats, leaning on our spiritual precepts, on the priceless tradition of unity and harmony, to move forward, ensuring the continuity of our thousand-year history,” emphasized Vladimir Putin (Orthodox Christianity 05-Nov-16).
The Russia Patriarch Kirill also added:
“If Vladimir thought the same way as some of our contemporaries … there would have been neither Rus’, nor Russia, nor the Russian Orthodox world, nor the great Russian Empire, nor modern Russia.”
Ukraine—a Divided Church
Ukraine is predominately Orthodox, with a small minority of Roman Catholics, mainly in Western Ukraine. However, the Orthodox Churches are divided. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was the primary religious power in Ukraine, being an extension of the Russian Orthodox Church. With the fall of communism in 1991 and Ukraine’s independence, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) has grown in power and in 2019, became independent, recognised by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, but not by the Russian Orthodox Church. Quite a few UOC churches switched alliances and joined the OCU. This is another sore point for Putin and Patriarch Kirill—their religious birthplace was now breaking up!
Russian patriarch likens Kiev for Russian Orthodoxy to Jerusalem for global Christianity
As Patriarch Kirill succinctly put it:
“Ukraine is not on the periphery of our church. We call Kiev ‘the mother of all Russian cities.’ For us Kiev is what Jerusalem is for many. Russian Orthodoxy began there, so under no circumstances can we abandon this historical and spiritual relationship. The whole unity of our Local Church is based on these spiritual ties” (Tass 31-Jan-22).
Putin restoring the Empire!
The key to understanding Putin’s actions lies in his zeal to restore Russia to its former glory. So when Putin refers to the ‘spiritual security’ of Russia, and refers to Ukraine as an inalienable part of Russian “history, culture, and spiritual space,” that spiritual security and spiritual space reside in Moscow Patriarchate. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate is schismatic, and must be brought back into the fold of Russian Orthodoxy. It is God’s will.
“Without control over Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate wouldn’t be the biggest Orthodox church,” Archbishop Yevstraty explained. “And the Russian Church would lose the basis of its vision to be the center of world Orthodoxy.” The situation is comparable to the breakup of the Soviet Union, he added. “Without Ukraine, the Soviet Union was no longer a superpower.”
And so President Putin’s mission to subdue and reclaim Ukraine is not only temporal, but spiritual. To him, NATO represents the evil forces of the Western Antichrist, which St Vladimir has been called by God to resist and defeat (Adrian Hilton’s blog 28-Feb-22).
Peter Dickenson writing in the Atlantic Council (02-Mar-22) stated:
“Putin’s extreme animosity towards Ukraine is shaped by his imperialistic instincts. It is often suggested that Putin wishes to recreate the Soviet Union, but this is actually far from the case. In fact, he is a Russian imperialist who dreams of a revived Czarist Empire and blames the early Soviet authorities for handing over ancestral Russian lands to Ukraine and other Soviet republics.
In late 2021, Putin revealingly referred to the fall of the USSR as the demise of “historical Russia.” Likewise, his often cited but widely misunderstood 2005 quote describing the Soviet collapse as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” was actually a lament for lost Russian greatness. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy,” he explained. “Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.”
Putin senses Europe’s present weakness, coinciding with a weak American President. For years he has brought Europe to increasingly depend upon Russian gas and oil and is said to have financed the “anti-fracking” movement in Britain, which successfully stopped the use of these extensive gas reserves. He has built up the Russian military and carried out numerous exercises to ensure they were battle ready. He has been the main stay of President Assad of Syria, establishing a firm foothold here. He now senses that he has a window of opportunity to press forward his aims to bring Ukraine back into the fold. We await to see how much further West he is prepared to go, at this time, to secure a strong Western border against Europe.
After that, then he can turn to the southern borders—Constantinople, Egypt, and Jerusalem!