Why All Catholics Should Support Ukraine

[The_Reginator]

From this opinion piece:

Russia has a centuries-long history of religious persecution of Catholics. The dominant Russian Orthodox Church has worked to help suppress the Catholic Church in Russia-controlled areas of Poland and Lithuania under the czars.

Why All Catholics Should Support Ukraine

I haven't heard much news lately and I really do not know what is happening with the Russia/Ukraine conflict. This opinion piece speaks of how the Catholic Church is being treated and began to change my earlier view on the subject (the view that governments and the media are misdirecting us).
Then I began reading the comments and became very confused as to what the truth really is.

• Who is/are the villain(s) here: Russia? Ukraine? The CIA? NATO? the USA?

AND​

• Under which regime is the Catholic Church safest in Ukraine and Russia?

 

[po18guy]

The Soviet Union was knocked down, but not out. It began the re-constitution the moment Putin assumed power. It is absolutely clear that he is re-assembling the union. Poland borders Ukraine and is the most heavily persecuted nation in recent history. It is the land bridge over which German and Russians forces have trod to wage war.
End times or not, of all generations, we are closest to the Parousia.
However, the only morally acceptable solution is a just end to an unjust war. Technology allows us to. watch human death, souls lost, families destroyed in real time. It is horrible to contemplate. This also tends to demonstrate that the Russian Orthodox Church is now as political as spiritual, perhaps even more so.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

The Soviet Union was knocked down, but not out. It began the re-constitution the moment Putin assumed power. It is absolutely clear that he is re-assembling the union. Poland borders Ukraine and is the most heavily persecuted nation in recent history. It is the land bridge over which German and Russians forces have trod to wage war.
End times or not, of all generations, we are closest to the Parousia.
However, the only morally acceptable solution is a just end to an unjust war. Technology allows us to. watch human death, souls lost, families destroyed in real time. It is horrible to contemplate. This also tends to demonstrate that the Russian Orthodox Church is now as political as spiritual, perhaps even more so.

To echo what I have said on other fora, being as absolutely generous to Putin (though he probably doesn't deserve it) as possible, if Russia perceived a tangible threat to her homeland from a NATO-enabled Ukraine, she might have been morally justified in neutralizing Ukraine's military capability as a pre-emptive strike. But attacking civilians, apartment buildings, hospitals, and so on, not justified at all. Plebiscites could have been held in heavily Russian areas, such as the Donbass, and if an overwhelming majority of the people therein wanted to be part of Russia and not Ukraine, then let them go, and redraw the borders.

Ukraine's hands aren't entirely clean either. Drone strikes into civilian sites deep within Russia, such as the attack on the apartment building in Moscow, aren't justified either, even as a retaliatory measure.

 

[po18guy]

Except for Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler (none of them NATO members), who has EVER invaded Russia? Who would ever want to? Ambitious tyrants like Putin view everything through the paranoid lens of jealousy for power. A defensive organization is not offensive, except to Putin.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Except for Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler (none of them NATO members), who has EVER invaded Russia? Who would ever want to? Ambitious tyrants like Putin view everything through the paranoid lens of jealousy for power. A defensive organization is not offensive, except to Putin.

Good point. But looking at it through Russia's eyes, they lost (albeit peacefully) the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the Central Asian republics (you probably can't think of Belarus as "lost", they are basically a vassal state of Russia). It would be kind of like a North American Union, ruled by an autocratic Washington and existing from the time of the First World War, and having consisted of everything north of the Panama Canal, including the Caribbean islands, then having broken up, and a rump United States being left behind with Texas chewed out of it. That rump USA would be mighty cranky about having (let's say) a risen Texas Republic firmly aligned with a China-DPRK alliance with the threat of bases and missiles in Wichita Falls, Amarillo, Denton, and Texarkana, and folks in the Panhandle longing to be reunited with the US. That's probably about how Putin views Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia, and probably about how he viewed the threat.