Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos
To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”
The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.
Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.
...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”
...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
No. You really don’t.
Because Putin is doing what we should be doing: fighting the evils of globalism and against the forces of Satanic darkness promoting sexual deviancy, degeneracy and other insanities. Instead, our nation is leading the clown parade straight to hell and demanding all other nations follow or we’ll threaten them by any means (yanking foreign aid, et al).
Zelensky could end this madness today and sue for peace. He refuses, because that would end his power. He wants war, weapons of mass destruction. He is absolutely evil.
"Do you really understand that Putin doesn’t recognize the Ukrainians as an independent nation? He considers them to be “bad Russians.”"
The Ukraine has had 32 years to demonstrate it can be a productive nation and manage its own affairs. It has summarily failed and is the most corrupt state in Europe. It has proven that it was a mistake to have separated from greater Russia, to which it was mostly a part of for hundreds of years. Aside from the Baltics, most of the former Soviet states were a part of the Russian Empire and they had no experience at being independent republics. I've touched on that in prior posts. The Ukraine's present regime presents a clear and present danger to the entire planet with its dictator (who now refuses to hold elections) threatening WW3. Someone has to step in and put a stop to the madness.
"Once Ukraine gives up, the Ukrainian nation ceases to exist and purges and forced Russification begin. Yes, it would be genocide by definition (genocide doesn’t have to be physical), but you don’t seem to care."
A "nation" that has existed for all of 32 years under one corrupt regime after another. That genocide argument is ludicrous.
"What has happened to the American conservative movement? Where are the intellectual giants like William Buckley and Frank S. Meyer? I can only see intellectual primitivism, self-centeredness and moral decline."
I saw that Buckley's National Review turned into a globalist leftist publication after his death. They wanted the Butcheress of Benghazi to be President over Trump, a man who was bringing peace to the world. Says it all.
Putin does want to end it. Zelensky doesn’t. He seems happy to sacrifice his citizenry to keep power and now refuses to hold elections so he won’t have to lose it.
Conscripting 16 year olds.
And what of the evil done if the Downfall you pray for comes to pass?
We don’t have to pray for a downfall in America. That’s already happened. Reject God and that’s what you get.
Nah, Russia is plagued with Putin’s mafia government.
While Biden is evil, Putin’s regime is far, far worse. Look at the state of Russia outside Moscow and st Petersburg and they make San Francisco look clean.
Correct, this isn’t about Russia but it’s cultural mindset which is inherited from the Mongol khaganate
And most of that land is uninhabited and uninhabitable.
Yet they want more
If Russia was going to take Constantinople then why is Putin killing Eastern Orthodox Christians in Ukraine?
Marmema is a Russian?
Ukraine was not getting missiles or anything else prior to Putin’s invasion.
Remember that, in 2008 Germany and France rejected the Georgian and Ukrainian request to join NATO for fear of “provoking Russia”.
6 weeks after that rejection, Russia invaded Georgia...
“And what of the evil done if the Downfall you pray for comes to pass? “
I pray for the Lord’s Mercy for the Christians of the West.
I believe that the fall of the evil rulers of the West will be by the Hand of the Lord, and not the hand of man.
If we see them fall suddenly, without warning, when they looked secure, it will be evidence it is the Lord’s doing.
Isaiah 40:
He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
I see a turn from praying for America’s downfall, to thinking it inevitable as a matter of God’s will and praying for mercy for Christians. The majesty of Isiah does not rescue what seems to me to be tangled theology and a confusion of political desire with God’s will.
Nope. Disband NATO.
No, I am praying for the Lord to remove the evil rulers, leaders, and elites of the West.
Now, maybe by some miracle they will all repent like the leadership of Nineveh.
But more likely they will be overthrown by mechanisms created by the Lord.
Or, for His own reasons he may leave them there for many decades or centuries.
Proverbs 16:
The Lord works out everything to its proper end— even the wicked for a day of disaster.
That is a less ambitious and more conventional goal than what seemed to be your initial post of praying for the downfall of America and the West. Yet, to my mind, it still seems to command the Lord to act in a certain way that you desire politically instead of asking for the end of “deliverance from evil.”
American. Looking for an expat location but currently in northern Michigan. After 28 yrs in the Seattle area, we moved to the Midwest 8 yrs ago. An area that is called by some a Trump bubble.
Don’t ask again. I am really tired of it, and your constant pursuit of calling me a Russian.
My husband, myself, and kids adopted from Russia attended a picnic held for Jimrob years ago in the Tacoma area.
I was fortunate to meet him and Sheila there.
Have you seen the exit sign?
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