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title: 'No, I''m not a fan of Putin and I don''t support the Russian Invasion'

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# No, I'm not a fan of Putin and I don't support the Russian Invasion

I am sick.

I’m sick of

For a history of this “Christian leader” people are defending:

Putin was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, working for 16 years in Russian intelligence from 1975-1991. I will also note that the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, while a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, had international travel that aligned with a KGB agent code-named “Mikhailov”.
In 1999, Putin launched unimaginable burtality to stop the Chechnyan’s speratists (don’t let the irony be lost - Putin is now supporting seperatists). In order to quell the rebellion, Putin put a terrorist warlord in power in Chechnya who would bend the knee. These are the 10k terrorists now invading Ukraine at Putin’s command.
In 2008, Putin sent troops into the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as “peacekeepers”, yet they openly targeted civilians indescriminately.
In 2014, Putin illegally seized Crimea and started conflicts in Luhansk and Donets. He supported sepratists who had camps where people were tortured and killed. There are also links to Putin and the bombing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 that killed 298 people.
The UN has cited Putin’s responsiblity in chemical attacks in Syria and shieled Bashar al-Assad from charges to the ICC in 2014.
Putin has run torture prisions and camps (“Isolation Prison” in Dontesk and the “Batman Prison” in Luhansk), including in nuclear shelters during the last Ukranian attakcs, Kyzhatisktan
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I am sick. I am sickened by seeing the damage done by Russia’s aggressive war. I am heartbroken seeing pictures of parents holding and mourning their children. I am helpless watching refugees line up trying to escape their own homes because of an aggressive country. And I am absolutely disgusted with the apologists justifying Putin’s behaviors behind a Christian label. Just so we are clear, what is happening is not a holy war. What we are watching is not the “denazification.” It is a dictator hellbent on what he sees as restoring Russia to her former glory. Just so we’re completely clear, let’s look at the history between Ukraine and Russia and Putin’s rise to power.

The area of modern-day Ukraine has been under the control of the Mongols, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, with parts of Crimea falling under the Ottoman Empire, and Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia ruled Western Ukraine. As Matthew Lenoe states, “today Ukraine is a nation-state,” and through democratic elections, we know that the “vast majority of Ukrainians” want to remain independent. The claim made by Putin and others that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people,” from the medieval Kievan Rus is less than genuine. There is “no continuous line to be traced from the loose confederation to the Ukrainian state…both Russians and Ukrainians are making claims that their direct descent from Kievan Rus are simply mythical and wrong”.

Ukraine is not under Nazi control, in need of "denazifying". Zelinsky, the democratically elected president, is the descendent of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. There are factions within Ukraine who are Nazis, but they constitute about 5% of the population. 

Before delving into what has happened in the last 30 years between Russia and Ukraine, it's essential to know who is leading the efforts in Russia.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent beginning in 1975, servings as a lieutenant colonel, before resigning to follow his political ambitions in 1991. He rose out of relative obscurity to the position of Prime Minister under the Yeltsin administration, which was mired in corruption allegations. Time for another side story:

As pressure was mounting on Yeltsin, a convenient distraction arose - a series of apartment building bombings across Russia. There were four successful bombings in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999. More than 300 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. These bombings were blamed on Chechens until a car was identified with FSB (post-Soviet KGB) officials, carrying RDX, a military-grade explosive used in the other four bombings and produced in one city in all of Russia, Perm. Three FSB officers were arrested, and the official line from the FSB was that it was a training operation. There's no public evidence to support their claim that the car was full of sugar, not RDX. Many believe that all four bombings were orchestrated by the Russian government, especially after the Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov was handed a note during a session and announced a bomb in Volodonsk, which was actually in Moscow. Three days later, Volodonsk experienced a bombing. The person who brought Seleznyov the note was an FSB officer. 

Despite the fact the bombings were not done by Chechans, Putin announced an attack on Chechnya. Yeltson, much to everyone's surprise, announced his immediate retirement and Putin is named as his successor. Putin gained Yeltsin's favor after the general prosecutor announced an investigation into Yeltsin's corruption. A grainy video of the prosecutor cavorting in the nude with two young women was released to the media and the FSB (through Putin) confirmed the video was the prosecutor. Many believe it was Putin and the FSB who released the video to protect Yeltsin, but in any case, we see clear connection to Putin and the weaponization of _kompromat_. In return for his elevation, Putin kept Yeltsin in a "golden cage," monitored who communicated with, and kept tabs on him until he died.

Okay, back to Chechnya. Putin launched a barbaric attack on Chechnya. The second Chechen war employed kidnapping, murder, hostage-taking, looting, and rape. Thousands of Chechen civilians were killed, 200,000 lost their homes because Russia indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas and targeted medical professionals. The Russian government censored information on the Chechen war.

After the war, Putin implemented a henchman as the Head of the Chechnya Republic named Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov tortures opposition and has executed people with no repercussions, including rounding up to torture and execute gay men and supporting honor killing of women. Kadyrov was a warlord and a terrorist who bent the knee, and it is these Chechen military forces that Putin has employed in Ukraine.

Putin himself has left a trail of bodies of his opposition over the years. Here's a brief list of how he handles those he disagrees with:
- Alexander Litvinenko - A former KGB agent, served tea laced with polonium-201, served by Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, FSB agents acting on orders "probably approved by Patrushev and Putin."
- Anna Politkovskaya - A journalist who wrote a book called "Putin's Russia," was shot point-blank outside of her apartment by contract killers paid $150k.
- Natalia Estemirova - A Russian journalist who reported human-rights abuses by Russia in Chechnya, was kidnapped and found dead with gunshots to her head.
- Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova - Markelov was a human-rights lawyer who represented journalists who opposed Putin. He and Baburova (an anti-corruption journalist) were shot while walking.
- Boris Nemtsov - The Former Deputy Prime Minister under Yeltsin. He accused Putin of corruption and capitalizing off of the oligarchs. He was shot near the Kremlin, and even though Putin personally took over the investigation, it remains unsolved.
- Boris Berezovsky - Russian oligarch who threatened to bring Putin down, was found dead in his apartment, in a locked bathroom with a ligature around his neck that couldn't be explained.
- Paul Klebnikov - Editor of the Russian edition of Forbes and had written about corruption. A contract killer killed him in a drive-by.
- Sergei Yushenkov - A Russian politician investigating the 1999 Russian apartment building bombings, was shot in the chest shortly after his political party, Liberal Russia, was recognized.
- Alexei Navalny - A Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, was poisoned with a new Novichok nerve agent while on an airplane. CNN and Navalny investigated and identified the FSB agents responsible through a recorded interview with one of the agents. Two points of interest - the same unit that tracked and poisoned Navalny killed two-four  other activists. The second point - the Russian police and Ministry of the Interior investigated the poisoning with over 100 pieces of potential evidence. Yet, they found no need for further investigation and found no sign that a crime was committed. Navalny is currently listed by Amnesty International as a prisoner of consciousness, as he remains in a Russian prison

In 2008, Putin ordered attacks on Georgia, invading South Ossetia. During this time, Russia attacked fleeing citizens in South Ossetia and Gori, bombed cities and villages, kidnapped civilians, plundered and burned, and used cluster bombs that killed civilians. It's estimated between 192,000-230,000 civilians were displaced. 

An important point, Putin started a repeated pattern claiming genocide to justify the invasion.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. During the time, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russia leader, refused to sign an association agreement with the EU. He instead accepted $15 billion in assistance from Russia. Ukrainian citizens were angry and took to the streets of Kyiv before a government crackdown killed dozens. Yanukovych fled, and chaos ensued, giving Putin the window to move troops into Crimea, sending in the military with no insignias on their uniform.    

During this invasion, the Human Rights Watch stated that pro-Russian insurgents "failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid deploying in civilian areas" and, in one case, "actually moved closer to populated areas as a response to government shelling." HRW called on all sides to stop using the "notoriously imprecise" Grad rockets. The insurgents took and beat hostages and threatened a beat those in favor of Kyiv. They took over hospitals, attacked medical staff, and destroyed equipment. Human Rights Watch cited Russia for using cluster bombs (again) near civilians and found detention camps and mass graves. Amnesty International reported executions of prisoners of war. Russia made claims of genocide.

Last month, Putin officially recognized two Ukrainian-separatist regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent from Ukraine. Putin, yet again, claims Ukraine is committing genocide. Ukraine has done some awful things, and not to minimize that fact, but so has Russia and most other nations - that is not a reason to attack a sovereign nation.
     
 As we're watching this unfold, let's be sure to remember how Russia treated a separatist region in Chechnya. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say Russian troops have attacked indiscriminately in civilian areas, with strikes on hospitals with warheads, and the continued use of cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons.     
     
The propaganda machine has been building for this moment for years and serves further to drive division in the West and the United States. There has been a campaign to associate Biden with Ukraine and corruption going back to 2015, Trump withheld aid from Ukraine, the Trump administration met secretly with Russian assets and lied about them, the GOP and right-wing new outlets have strong, loud voices supporting Putin, and today, a US Senator leaked photos of Zelinsky in his bunker. Russian Orthodox leaders have been pressuring the Ukrainian Church and split it between the Ukrainians (recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Church) and the pro-Russian faction, in-line with the Russian Orthodox Church.

I have yet to see any actions by Putin that show a general love of Christ and a Christian worldview. 

Instead, we see a man who wants to be viewed as a Russian prince rebuilding Russia and returning it to its glory. We have a dictator who has cracked down on freedoms weaponized the Russian Orthodox Church, using Patriarch Kirill, identified as a Russian agent. At the same time, he was an archimandrite (priest/monk) and bishop. The spin making this out as a holy war and Putin standing up to globalism would be laughable if people weren't buying it. Putin's behavior doesn't show compassion, mercy, care for the widows and orphans, etc. Instead, we see a power grab and a man who is afraid of NATO getting too close.
