By Taras M. Dyatlik
Why is it that since 2014, when Russian forces silently occupied Crimea, the “world” whispered for restraint from Ukraine—but not from the Kremlin? How telling that after eight years of simmering Russian war in Donbas, when missiles finally rained on Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the “chorus for peace” grew louder—yet still directed at those under bombardment, not those commanding the bombers.
Have we not witnessed this perverse dynamic—where Ukrainian civilians, sheltering in subway stations and basements because of daily Russian shelling, are lectured about the virtue of negotiation?
Where are these “sermons” directed at the Russian filtration camps, at the Russian commanders who reduced Mariupol to rubble? What spiritual teaching justifies asking those in Bucha and Irpin to consider the aggressor’s “security concerns” while the dead and injured—our neighbors—lay in the streets, day and night, after massive Russian strikes?
When “foreign voices” call for territorial concessions, do they understand they are demanding the sacrifice of not just land, but of people? Would these same “philosophers of compromise” readily offer their own communities, families, and children as peace offerings? Would you?
Is Ukrainian land and life somehow less sacred than that of the “great Christian nations,” whose borders are respected without question?
Is it not curious how the most impassioned pleas for Ukraine to embrace nonviolence often come from places protected by nuclear weapons—where air raid sirens remain historical artifacts rather than daily warnings? What authority on survival comes from those who mistake the temporary peace of their geography for a universal condition?
Did not the Psalmist cry out, “How long, O Lord, will the wicked triumph?” When Christ spoke of peacemakers, did He mean those who would sacrifice others’ lives and freedom to preserve a false tranquility—or those who would stand for justice, even at great cost?
And what of those international “peace dealers and advocates” who recommended Ukrainians simply surrender in those first harrowing days of 2022? Where are those peacemakers now—willing to relocate to Kherson or Kharkiv or Sumy to personally demonstrate how nonviolent resistance works against occupying forces? How many of these “pacifist theorists” have stood before Russian tanks in Kherson, armed only with their convictions about the futility of self-defense?
Since 2014, has not the burden of peace fallen almost exclusively on Ukrainian shoulders? When Russian troops crossed internationally recognized borders, when they occupied nuclear power plants in Chornobyl and Energodar, and when they targeted hospitals and theaters sheltering children—why did calls for de-escalation flow westward from Moscow, rather than eastward toward it?
Are not those who claim to protect traditional Christian values—yet counsel capitulation to evil in the name of peace—making a mockery of justice? Did not Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from within Nazi Germany, recognize that peace at any cost becomes a grotesque idol? Would we have counseled the enslaved Hebrews to better accommodate Pharaoh’s concerns?
When we Ukrainians defend our homes, our language, and our very right to exist as a people, why is our resistance labeled “escalation”—while the initial Russian invasion fades into the background of global concern? Why are we called to respect the Russian language, but we do not hear the same calls for Russians to respect the Ukrainian language and ethnic identity?
Is there not something profoundly broken in a so-called “Christian” moral theological framework that places the burden of peace on those trying to survive—rather than those who shattered that peace with artillery, kamikaze drones, and cruise missiles?
The most profound question echoes through the destroyed apartment blocks of Kherson and Kharkiv, and the mass graves of Bucha and Izium:
In a world of Christian Empires that demand “peace-deal pacifism” primarily from those under attack—while treating aggression as an immutable force of nature—can justice ever be achieved?
And when history renders its verdict on our time, will it remember how comfortable nations preached patience from a distance—while Ukrainians bled for the very principles those nations claimed to uphold?
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Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war… April 12, 2025, the 1,144th day of the ongoing full-scale, unprovoked Russian war.
