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MASSACRE OF CIVILIAN EVACUEES OUTSIDE KYIV

 

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(24Mar.) In the village of Stoyanka-2 outside Kyiv, a half-dozen cars line the road, riddled with holes, their bodywork mangled by bullets and an explosion.

Their windows, bearing handwritten Ukrainian signs saying "Children" are perforated or shattered. The suitcases inside the vehicles appear to have been searched. The bodies have been recovered by volunteers or removed by Russian soldiers or locals.

This is what remains of the quarter of a 20-car civilian evacuation convoy that tried to escape the suburban town of Irpin on the morning of March 6. As the convoy entered Stoyanka-2, Russian forces opened fire, most likely from a nearby building, killing at least four people in the first five cars and wounding several more. The rest managed to back up, turn around and flee.

Oleksandr Syrtsov saw it happen directly in front of him. "I saw with my own eyes how my loved ones were being shot to death… like cannon fodder," he told the Kyiv Independent over the phone from Kyiv. "In 30 seconds, I lost my friend, my cousin, all my things, my documents, my car… all I saved was my life."

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The brutality of Russia's war of agression against Ukraine is beyond description. My stomach churned when I saw this photo, read news articles, and when receiving many letters from friends and former coworkers there. One former coworker wrote that he and his family had to evacuate from Kyiv to Poland just before Russia attacked, but that the above group of his Ukrainian colleagues drove the above 20-car convoy back from Poland to Kyiv in order to take 200 people to Poland. Our Russian friends still in Russia, however, are mostly silent.

Another ministry in Russia that we've worked with sent a rather bland, positive letter today describing their ministry there, but a letter from the same ministry sent from the U.S. was quite descriptive of the refugee situation in Poland, Germany, Moldova, and Romania. A half-dozen other former coworkers have written, sending photos and prayer requests.

Antiochian Metropolitan Joseph posted regarding Ukraine – "As Orthodox Christians, we oppose any type of violence or injustice throughout the world. Rather, we call upon Almighty God to send us His heavenly peace and bring us together to resolve our disputes through fair and open discussions. I join with all the clergy and faithful of this God-protected Archdiocese to pray fervently for the immediate end of hostilities, and for the health and safety of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian people in these difficult times." [Metr. Onufriy heads the Moscow-oriented UOC-MP.]

Also the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America has likewise called for “all parties and all people to refrain from further aggression, withdraw…all weapons and troops from sovereign lands, and instead to pursue de-escalation and restoration of peace through dialogue and mutual respect.” The Antiochian Orthodox Patriatrchate, based in Syria, owes its continued existence to the protection of Russian armed forces there. Thus, it makes only vague, equivocating statements about Ukraine. The following commentaries, however, are all rather clear:

THE CHURCH AND THE "DIABOLICAL FORCE." HOW PATRIARCH KIRILL FORGOT ABOUT THE GOSPEL AND BECAME A PREACHER OF FRATRICIDE by Sergei Chapnin, who formerly worked in the Russian Patriarch's office but became a dissident, was defrocked, and now writes bluntly and plainly about what's really going on there.

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH: THE INVADERS OF UKRAINE SEEM TO WANT THE HUMILIATION OF THE PROUD UKRAINIAN PEOPLE: This is the latest of several messages by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

BISHOPS OF THE POLISH ORTHODOX CHURCH: WAR IN UKRAINE "WICKED AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE"

METROPOLITAN IOBI (PATRIARCHATE OF GEORGIA): RUSSIANS ARE ONLY CHRISTIANS IN WORDS, NOT IN DEEDS.

METROPOLITAN OF THE GEORGIAN CHURCH: ANY PATRIARCH OR BISHOP WHO SUPPORTS RUSSIA'S ACTIONS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ORTHODOXY.

[VIDEO] INTERVIEW WITH ARCHBISHOP DANIEL OF THE UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH USA (24 FEB 22)

[AUDIO] OCA METROPOLITAN TIKHON AND POLISH ORTHODOX ARCHDEACON JOSEPH MATUSIAK SPEAK ON PROVIDING UKRAINIAN REFUGEE RELIEF.

HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON WITH THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA - an article from 2018 explaining why the Antiochian Orthodox Church remains silent about Ukraine: being based in Syria: "Russian political and military support is vital to its very survival in the Middle East."

A DECLARATION ON THE "RUSSIAN WORLD" (RUSSKII MIR) TEACHING. This "Russkii mir" ideology claims that wherever there are Russian-speaking people, that part of the world is Russian territory and should be united with Russia. It also portrays Moscow as the center of true Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Patriarch as heretical and schismatic.

AN ORTHODOX AWAKENING by George Weigel in First Things: let us hope and pray that this war will bring about an Orthodox awakening!

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Weapons Of Financial Destruction And The New World Disorder

 

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As I wrote earlier here, in the fog of war truth is often the first casualty. People come up with the strangest predictions and wild conspiracy theories. We simply don't know, we can't know, what the outcome of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will be. But the article Weapons Of Financial Destruction And The New World Disorder just might give us some insight into what could likely be the outcome of this conflict.

The author, David C. Hendrickson, is professor emeritus of political science at Colorado College. Here's an excerpt: "The comprehensive sanctions the United States and the West have imposed on Russia take us into an entirely new world. The sanctions are multidimensional, but most important is the “freezing” of Russian foreign exchange reserves, what President Biden called Putin’s $630 billion war fund in his State of the Union. This action means that all previous economic contracts between Russia and the West are invalid."

The article goes on to explain that it happened "against the backdrop of a worldwide crisis in supply chains. That is about to get a lot worse. Among the cascading dominos: 30 percent of the world's wheat exports [i.e., from Russia and Ukraine] are now cut off. Russia's exports of fertilizers – 18 percent of the potash market, 20 percent of ammonia exports – are off market. Energy prices have exploded. A suddenly bipartisan United States has imposed a (mostly symbolic) ban on Russian oil imports." Where will the poorer nations of the world turn for oil, wheat and fertilizer? How many millions of their people might die of starvation? And for the more prosperous nations, what will be the inflationary impact on prices? How will the poor among us in the West survive?

Perhaps more importantly, where will Russia turn to sell its gas, oil, and wheat, now that the West won't buy those commodities? China is quietly siding with and building economic relations with Russia. China needs more wheat, fertilizer, gas, and oil to feed its people and power its economy and produce goods for the rest of the world. So the West's embargos and tariffs on Russian goods will likely drive these two nations closer and create out of the two a much greater economic powerhouse than China is by itself. In addition, if poorer nations are forced to choose between Western sanctions and feeding their populations, might they decide to use another currency such as the Chinese yuan instead of the U.S. dollar as a means of exchange?

Ever since I was lecturing during the late-1990s at Mari State University in Russia, I have said that if the U.S. dollar loses its position as the world's reserve currency, all those trillions of dollars floating around in world markets would come home to roost, causing even greater economic woes: massive inflation in the U.S. and elsewhere. So this conflict in Ukraine might not only backfire on V. Putin, but also on the West.