NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
The slogans from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 capture the upside-down authoritarian world of Big Brother. They also echo how President Donald Trump is talking about the war between Russia and Ukraine that started in 2014 but significantly increased three years ago with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor early on the morning of Feb. 24.
On this somber anniversary, many are remembering the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have been killed in fighting over the last three years in addition to the many more wounded or displaced from their homes. But the president of the United States is instead trying to rewrite the facts of the war in a manner so obviously absurd that it might even make Orwell’s Big Brother blush.
“You should’ve never started it,” Trump told Ukraine last week.
Yes, it was a bad idea for Ukraine to start the war by … checks notes … sending Russian soldiers from Russia into Ukraine. Let’s be very clear: Russia’s Vladimir Putin started the war.
Before daybreak on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian military forces poured into Ukraine. They launched deadly airstrikes on Ukrainian cities, sent troops and tanks across the border into a sovereign nation, and nearly captured the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early in the fighting. Russia started this war. I remember this clearly. At A Public Witness, we were actually about to publish a piece about how Putin’s Christian Nationalistic regime had infected the Russian Orthodox Church. We wrote that piece because Putin had been making it clear that he intended to invade Ukraine — and we noted the start of the Russian invasion at the beginning of our report three years ago.
Not only that, but the conflict really started in 2014 — again instigated by the Russians. After Ukrainians protested their corrupt, pro-Russian president in 2014 and pushed the nation toward closer political and economic ties with the European Union, Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and supported pro-Russian separatists who violently took over parts of eastern Ukraine. Putin, the former KGB agent with an imperialistic dream of resurrecting the old Soviet Union, started this war.
Ukrainian flags and anti-Putin signs outside the Russian embassy in Riga, Latvia, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Brian Kaylor/Word&Way)
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump added last week.
Trump looked at Ukraine and Russia and decided to call one of the leaders a dictator, but he didn’t choose the one who actually is! While Volodymyr Zelenskyy has led Ukraine since 2019 after winning a free and fair election, Putin has led Russia since 2000, had the constitution changed so he could stay in office for additional terms, and “won” multiple elections riddled with fraud and vote-rigging. In fact, his reelection last year, when he claimed to receive an improbable 87% of the vote, came after stealing tens of millions of votes and barring some candidates from running (like dissident Alexei Navalny, who then died in prison). It wasn’t a real election but what political scientist Brian Klaas calls “an ‘election-style event’” and “voting without democracy.”
While Zelenskyy’s term was to end last year, Ukrainian law actually prohibits elections during martial law. The blame for a lack of elections lies fully with the Russian military occupying large swaths of Ukraine and actively bombing the rest. And this isn’t actually unusual. The British repeatedly delayed elections while the Nazis bombed them in World War II, thus extending Winston Churchill’s time as prime minister beyond the regular term — a point the United Kingdom’s defense minister noted last week while defending Zelenskyy from Trump’s attacks. But that’s significantly different than in Russia where Putin changes the rules, cheats, and kills his opposition — all while not under invasion from an enemy force. Holding “elections” does not clear Putin from the charge of being a dictator.
A large anti-Putin banner hangs on a building facing the Russian embassy in Riga, Latvia, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Brian Kaylor/Word&Way)
Truth Matters
The problem isn’t merely that Trump is making false claims and continues to double down on them even when pressed. It’s that he’s defending a bloody regime that not only attacked another nation but also persecutes its own people — including many Christians.
Russia is a Christian Nationalistic state with a collusion between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church. But it demonstrates that Christian Nationalism is not just dangerous to nonbelievers and those of other faiths. Christian Nationalism only empowers and privileges a narrow slice of Christianity, thus casting out other Christians as not the “right” kind of Christian. So while the Russian Orthodox Church backs Putin’s regime and even heretically justifies Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he returns the favor by giving the Church special political and economic privileges. And those of other Christian denominations are persecuted.
In 2016, Putin signed a law targeting missionary and evangelistic activities. The law criminalizes sharing one’s faith outside an official house of worship. Local Christians are not always sure what activities could spark a complaint, especially since house churches are not always treated by officials as houses of worship. Local faith communities that operate unregistered — like Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists frequently do — are especially at risk. Missionaries from other countries are particularly restricted, even being fined for activities within a church.
The most targeted religious group in Russia since 2016 has been the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But Pentecostals have been second and Baptists third. Hundreds of Pentecostals and Baptists have been arrested and fined, and the government has also seized church properties and shut down seminaries. More recently, the government has also arrested pastors (and others) who speak against the invasion of Ukraine. A prominent Russian Baptist leader went into exile in 2023 to avoid arrest because he dared to pray for peace.
That’s the regime Trump defends.
Churches in the occupied parts of Ukraine have also been ransacked and destroyed by Russian-backed separatists, and Russian forces have damaged hundreds of churches in Ukraine since the invasion three years ago. The separatist forces have also banned various Christian books, hymnals, and news publications, including those published by Ukrainian Baptists. In the Luhansk Region of Ukraine, the separatists even banned the Gospel of John as an “extremist” text! All with the support of Putin.
A church leader inspects the damage inside the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine, on Sunday, July 23, 2023, after Russian missile attacks on the city. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)
As the prophet Isaiah warned, we must not call evil good. Trump might try to shrug at reality and ask, “What is truth?” like Pilate did in that extremist Gospel of John, but saying Ukraine started the war and Zelenskyy is a dictator no more makes it true than claiming that war is peace, freedom is slavery, or ignorance is strength.
While it’s often claimed that truth is “the first casualty of war,” we learn a better way from Jesus in the extremist Gospel of John: “The truth will set you free.” So let us be counted among those who speak the truth and refuse the Orwellian doublespeak. Even if it means we get labeled as extremists.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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