What about Ukraine, then?

How is the ongoing satanic deception operating in the current war?

On the one hand, consider how the crisis was engineered by Western powers, especially the US and its UK lapdog, just as the COVID narrative was beginning to unravel and the cost of Net Zero was beginning to attract popular alarm. Yes, there were Russian troops exercising on the Ukrainian border, but that was nothing new until it became, conveniently, the harbinger of World War III. It is easy to conclude that a distraction, and a new reason for perpetual fear and state control, was needed.

On the same hand, we’ve all been encouraged to forget the historical background of what is, without doubt, Western eastward expansion against Russian interests over many years, even including a violent engineered coup to install a Neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine in 2014: see this excellent overview by Lee Smith. The Hunter Biden laptop story alone ought to raise grave doubts about the “defending a brave western democracy” narrative.

To the astute observer, the intransigence and hypocrisy of “our side” has been obvious from the start of the present crisis – witness the NATO demand for diplomatic solutions, but the refusal by Biden etc even to discuss reasonable Russian demands that the buffer-state Ukraine should not become a NATO nuclear base on its borders (we have already been arming Ukraine for years and there are several US “biosecurity” labs there). Bear in mind that our refusal to countenance Ukrainian neutrality has immediately resulted in its being invaded – a fatal miscalculation of the situation made from safety the other side of the world.

And it appears to be the case that the hysterical and premature imposition of sanctions not only weakened the motivation for Russian restraint, but will cripple our own people’s well-being more than Russia’s, when our economies are already in shreds.

War having started, our press is acting as if Ukraine is a NATO member and we are at war, with Vladimir Putin being portrayed as a mad dictator, like the leaders of every other country we have invaded in the last few decades from Serbia to Syria. “Bayoneted babies” propaganda was, perhaps, slightly justified in the heat of World War 1, if rather crude. But even-handed journalism would be better now, if our press were not, as we have seen for the last two years, controlled by propagandist governments. The Chilcott report ought, surely, to have made us more cautious about press and government jingoism – but those in power know how easy it is to get the public’s blood up with wall-to-wall war coverage, even when the footage is years old or from other places. Or even taken from video games.

It is odd that it is the free West that has blocked access to the Kremlin website, so we cannot judge for ourselves the plausibility or otherwise of Putin’s rather sober (compared to Boris Johnson’s) pronouncements, whilst Russia has left the Internet and even mobile phone networks intact in Ukraine. It used to be the Nazis who blocked enemy transmissions: Britons listened to Lord Haw-Haw freely, and laughed. Now all except the official narrative is misinformation, to be strictly censored.

We fail to notice that the main war is in the East, in Donetsk, a largely pro-Russian region for seven years under Ukranian assault, because the journalists are all tucked away in Kyiv, where in Ukraine’s complex ethnic and political mix a majority look westward rather than eastward for their roots. That is not a complete picture.

On the other hand… there is a widespread feeling, even amongst those sympathetic to Russia, that Putin’s Kremlin has gone much too far by invading. My relative, an experienced Russian historian, goes along with the idea that his hankering after a revival of Tsarist “Great Russia” is a significant factor. Few expected him to do the full invasion bit – and yet a US military expert from the First Gulf War has pointed out that the invasion has actually been very “soft” compared, say, to our own “Operation Shock and Awe” in Iraq, which killed many tens of thousands of innocent civilians for the sake of imaginary WMD. Putin has announced in advance an exit strategy that might still be achievable – whereas trying to control a rebellious province after a conquest must seem highly problematic to the Russians: they have seen our failure in Afghanistan in the recent past, and remember their own a few decades earlier

We see that large numbers in Russia have demonstrated against the invasion, but that only demonstrates a healthy plurality of opinion there, and not necessarily a majority against Putin’s regime. Before we bemoan the arrests that have, it seems, taken place at these demonstrations, we ought to remember the violent arrests in Ottawa by unidentifiable storm troopers, combined with illegal seizure of assets, just a week ago. Truly totalitarian regimes control their press and people better than to allow public protests… and the western press were almost silent on the Truckers’ Protest even before their violent disruption.

Of more significance to Christians are the personal messages from Christians both in Ukraine and in Russia. The Baptist Missionary Society here passed on pleas for prayer, with tinges of political bitterness, from Ukrainian Christians. These cries from our brethren are important, but are not necessarily fully definitive of the true situation. Remember how few Christians here have seen past their own familiar politics and recognised the lies and manipulation over COVID. Ukraine is a massively corrupt country without a free press, and Christians are not immune from propaganda or anti-Russian prejudice.

In the Eastern breakaway regions, the situation is different. Evangelicals have been significantly persecuted by the pro-Russian militias that supported their breaking away. We seem not to hear from those believers, but we should remember that the motive for their persecution is nationalistic loyalty to Russian Orthodox faith. This Christian persecution is a significant factor for Protestants in Russia itself, and is not likely to enamour Evangelicals to the regime: whether that reflects how most Russians feel is another matter. But are we to see the Orthodox persecutors as Russian enemies, or as ill-informed brethren? Did we not pray for Orthodox believers in Iraq?

The general lesson I take from all this is that we should pray for peace, and particularly for the peace of Christ’s people, but be extremely cautious to join with the crowd in taking sides, especially if we are being persistently stirred up (in Churchill’s words)to “War, War” rather than “Jaw, Jaw.” This is particularly the case if one suspects that Satan is the brains behind this situation.

I can’t help being aware that, whilst one can see the Western Military-Industrial Complex as one player, the nationalist Russians and their allies (more numerous than our press admits) in opposition to them as a second, and China, inscrutably on the sidelines waiting to swallow both, as a third, yet even that global competition might, conceivably, be a deception.

After all, remember that the keynote speaker at this year’s WEF assembly, introducing “The Great Narrative,” was Chairman Ji, and that Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin were both in attendance. Putin, like Trudeau, Macron, Ardern and others, is a proud product of Klaus Schwab’s Global Leaders’ Program, and all are praised by Schwab just as he praises Ji and the Chinese system. Are they all chums together, or at least are they unwitting pawns of the master strategist whose aim is to assemble the nations against the Church of Christ in the end times?

John writes, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). Why would we think our own governments, with no commitment to Christ, would be exempted from that? How do we view the practising Orthodox Putin, seen by many Russians as God’s bulwark against the Western rise of Antichrist? Which side of this conflict is actually more likely to spawn an antichrist?

Both, perhaps?