Trump, Putin, Ukraine - and Bible truth

We have just marked the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign leaders gathered in Kyiv to commemorate the invasion and pledge continued support to Ukraine.

President Zelensky has estimated that 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, 380,000 wounded, and 35,000 are missing in action, likely dead.

The scale of loss is the biggest in the living memory of most people in western nations. The Russian invasion has brought to a prosperous, free European country, death, destruction, displacement, trauma, and the loss of health, life and peace.

Absent from the commemorations was Donald Trump, whose new administration has swiftly shaken up the diplomatic world order. Recent images of US and Russian politicians meeting in Saudi Arabia shows how much has changed. This was a meeting about Ukraine, without Ukraine. And also without Ukraine’s European allies or neighbours, and certainly without NATO’s blessing.

Of course, no deal has been agreed. Drones continue to bomb soldiers in the Donbas and missiles continue to injure and kill civilians in Kyiv.

But it’s clear that the new US administration believes it can easily deal with Putin. Indeed, last week, Vice President, JD Vance told the Munich security conference that he wasn’t concerned about any threat from Russia or China. Instead of addressing the issue of peace in Ukraine, his speech focused on what he believes is the real threat to Europe: the threat ‘from within’. A retreat from free speech and the increase of ‘thoughtcrime’. He cited various examples including the introduction of abortion buffer zones in the UK.

Now I have some sympathy with this view. I agree with VP Vance that people should not be arrested for silently praying outside abortion clinics. There is a concerning illiberal tendency among liberals to support freedom of expression only for those who agree with them. But true liberalism will defend the rights of others to hold their beliefs and express them – within limits – as they wish.

But Vance’s speech, so keen to defend European voters’ freedoms to speak their mind, made no mention of the deeper loss of freedom for Ukrainians. There was no recognition that their territory has been invaded, their free speech eliminated in occupied areas, and their children kidnapped from their families. Believing ‘wokery’ is a bigger threat to democracy and freedom than an actual despot in Moscow who literally invades sovereign countries, kills his opponents, and outlaws a free press, is surely a result of too much time online.

The problem when you join the culture war is that you end up blind to the shortcomings of your own tribe. It is too easy for us to call out only the injustices that fit our neat worldview. But a Biblical worldview should not allow us to fit our faith to our politics. Quite the opposite.

Real war, with bombs and bullets, tanks and drones, is hellish. We can’t comprehend what Ukrainians have endured for the past three years. Let’s not trivialise or dismiss their suffering. Let’s advocate for them in prayer. Let’s urge our politicians to stand with them in practice. Let’s not compare their war in any way to a click-baiting culture war of words.

Parts of our culture are consciously, even militantly, Godless and atheistic. Other parts would appropriate Christianity for political purposes, and therefore neuter and distort the gospel. My worry is the strain of Christian nationalism being trumpeted from the US government could fall into that latter trap. We should resist the former without falling for the flattery of the latter, because neither are the truth.

Ultimately, all kingdoms and civilisations will fail. Western civilisation and Putin’s exhausted empire of violence will fall. NATO won’t hold forever. But in the book of Daniel (2:44) we get a promise that gives us a greater hope:

‘…the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.’