re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

quote:

---

While adjusting for inflation, the US military budget now stands at 1T USD.

The highest since WWII.

---

quote:

---

Sherman Tank during WW2: $44,000-$64,000.

---

quote:

---

I remember when politards were celebrating the across the board 10% military budget increase the last administration brought us. I believe most was spent on replacing weapons we were mothballing in the next 5-10 years. Weird this is not being celebrated as an actual example of 4d chess

---

quote:

---

This is just BS talking head talk. There is no way Belarus or Russia (Wagner or not) is going to invade a NATO country to open a land bridge to Kaliningrad. They don't have the military power to get 5KM into Poland or Lithuania without being decimated.

It is not going to happen...anyone who says otherwise is smoking crack or preaching to the home team.

---

quote:

---

"In the northern part of Staromayorske, Donetsk region, the enemy made an unsuccessful attempt to restore the lost position," the Ukrainian General Staff said in the evening report.

---

quote:

---

I missed this somehow, that’s a lot of votes

“A pro­posal to pro­hibit all se­cu­rity as­sistance to Ukraine gar­nered 70 Re­pub­li­can votes, or nearly one-third of all Re­pub­li­can House mem­bers, on Thurs­day.”

---

quote:

---

Thread unpacking my latest @TheStudyofWar assessment with @KatStepanenko.

We assess Russian occupation authorities are likely conducting a campaign of systematic religious persecution in occupied Ukraine in support of a larger campaign of cultural genocide against Ukraine.

Our team did a deep dive on religious persecution events that Russian forces have reportedly inflicted against Ukrainians and discovered at least 76 reports of Russian forces deliberately coercing religious groups.

This includes 4 event types:

1. Killing / capturing clergy

2. Closing, nationalizing, or forcefully converting places of worship to the Moscow Patriarchate

3. Killing looting, desecration, or deliberate destruction of a place of worship

4. Raid / arrest of congregants

This is a conservative report which contains only a small subset of all reported religious persecution events. We did *not* include events where indirect fire may have unintentionally killed religious leaders or destroyed places of worship.

The events included in this study are drawn from reports of Russian forces – usually infantry, security personnel, or occupation officials – deliberately coercing religious groups.

This report also excludes many instances of Russian religious repressions in areas Russian forces have occupied from spring 2014 to February 24, 2022, to focus on more recent persecutions in newly-occupied areas.

Key findings:

1. Russian authorities systematically repress religious liberty in Russia as a matter of state policy. (See Russia's Yarovaya Law and its implementation)

2. Russia is exporting its state policies of systematic religious persecution to Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Russian authorities enforce Russian federal laws – including the Yarovaya and other “anti-extremist” laws – in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

3. Moscow’s religious persecution campaign seeks to eradicate the Ukraine's Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which Moscow views as schismatic despite the decision by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence from Moscow.

Russian occupation officials are systematically seizing UOC property to transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate and are eliminating worship in the Ukrainian language.

Witness reports indicate that Russian authorities are seemingly targeting the OCU for its Ukrainianess.

4. Russian occupation forces have also targeted other denominations that are distinctly culturally Ukrainian.

5. Russia’s campaign also represses Ukraine's Protestant minority. Available open-source reporting indicates that the most common victims of Russian religious persecution after Ukrainian Orthodox are Protestants, particularly evangelical Baptists in southern Ukraine.

Witness reports indicate that Russian soldiers are especially brutal to Protestants

6. Russia’s systematic religious persecution supports a larger Russian campaign of cultural genocide against Ukraine.

We have previously assessed that Russia is conducting mass deportations of Ukrainian children and depopulating Ukrainian territory in what likely amounts to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide declares that genocide includes “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

This definition aligns with current Russian efforts to eliminate “undesirable” Ukrainian religious groups in occupied Ukrainian territories.

Now we have two identified genocidal Russian lines of effort: deporting children and eliminating religious groups.

Russian deliberate attacks and vandalism against places of worship in occupied Ukraine may also constitute war crimes

Russian trolls and detractor against his argument will predictably argue, "But what about what Ukraine is doing against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's Moscow?" (UOC MP)

The rebuttal is fairly simple. The UOC MP is *not* an independent religious organization but rather an extension of the Russian state and an instrument of Russian hybrid warfare. The UOC MP is the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church’s subordinate element in Ukraine.

There's plenty of documentation to argue this.

The UOC MP provided material support for Russia’s initial invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Russian soldiers used UOC MP churches as military storage depots, garrisons, field hospitals, and even fighting positions during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

One UOC MP priest in Lysychansk, Luhansk Oblast, collected information on his OCU clergy rivals and gave instructions to Russian soldiers to murder a Ukrainian priest.

You'll notice our map also includes the Moscow Patriarchate. It's been very interesting to see Russian soldiers reportedly crack down on their own who did not fully support the Russian military.

Russian troops reportedly searched the UOC MP Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Melitopol in February 2023 to register UOC MP priests who refused to pray for the Russian military’s success in Ukraine or for Patriarch Kirill’s health.

Russian soldiers reportedly abducted a UOC MP priest who actively distributed humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians in Kherson City in April 2022.

---

quote:

---

A Convoy of Vans and Trucks with the Wagner PMC Group claimed to have been spotted earlier today on the M-4 Highway in the Voronezh Region of Western Russian heading North towards the Border with Belarus; notice that there doesn’t appear to be an Armor or Heavy Equipment with the Convoy.

---

quote:

---

They don't have the military power to get 5KM into Poland or Lithuania without being decimated.

---

quote:

---

Earlier this summer, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Ukraine, posted that Russian soldiers had seized the city’s Ukrainian Christian Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity. After ruthlessly expelling the clergy, the staffer noted that as many as 30 troops remained in the building, at least in part because it provided a "human shield" for troops. The church is located just feet from occupied residential buildings.

The takeover of a Christian church might seem strange at first. What threat could a church filled with worshiping men, women and children pose to a modern army? But according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), this incident is "part of a wider systematic religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine."

While it has been grossly underreported in the U.S. press, Russia has been waging a brutal campaign against Christians and religious minorities in Ukraine.

According to the Institute for Religious Freedom, nearly 500 religious buildings, theological institutions and sacred places in Ukraine were destroyed, damaged or looted by the Russian military since the war began. Russia has murdered at least 26 religious leaders while imprisoning and torturing many others. More are missing or unaccounted for.

Russian soldiers frequently threaten evangelical Christians in Ukraine, labeling them as "American spies" and "enemies of the Russian Orthodox people." One Russian soldier told an employee of a Christian institute in Ukraine "evangelical believers like you should be completely destroyed … a simple shooting will be too easy for you. You need to be buried alive."

In September of last year, Russian soldiers detained Mykhailo Britsyn, a pastor in Russian-occupied Melitopol during a religious service. His crime? Providing humanitarian aid to local residents who were displaced because of the war.

---

quote:

---

What makes a church an attractive soft target is what it stands for in the hearts and minds of the people. Religious symbols hold significant cultural and spiritual value for communities. So, these attacks constitute a deliberate attempt to undermine identity and heritage while demoralizing the targeted group.

The Kremlin labels itself "pro-Christian," of course, but the facts on the ground expose this as little more than propaganda. Religious freedom has seriously declined in Russia since the late 1990s. Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and others face fines and repercussions for "illegal" missionary activities under ambiguous laws and unclear laws.

---

quote:

---

_____________________________________

David Curry is president and CEO of Global Christian Relief.

---