‘Here in Berlin, we all hope that the time of confrontation is in the past … I hope we all have rejected the barriers that divided us before. Today, we would like to work on this agenda with you. Think about our children, think about our future, our Europe. This is very important for Russians as well’
former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 9th November 2009
There has been a considerable escalation of tension over Russia's war on Ukraine during the past week, following the delivery of Iranian missiles to Moscow, the negotiations over Ukrainian forces using long-range British and American missiles against Russian targets, and the corresponding threats from Putin. It would appear that, after two and a half years of grinding warfare during which Ukraine has shown immense courage and fortitude, the prospects for peace are as far off as ever.
It all seems a long way from Dimitri Medvedev's comment at the twentieth anniversary of German re-unification; and yet it was less than four years after his speech, given by such a close colleague of Vladimir Putin, that Russia decided unilaterally to annex Crimea: the opening shot in their aggression towards Ukraine.
Last Friday the House of Lords held a debate on the conflict in Sudan — a less-reported but equally bloody conflict which has continued for years. Archbishop Justin Welby called for a long-term view towards peace building in that debate: something which is also urgently needed in Ukraine, where the prospects for peace could be significantly boosted by his own intervention.
It is the same Christian faith which underpins both the Russian Orthodox and Anglican churches, and one of its key messages can be found in the gospel of St. Matthew chapter 5, to ‘love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you’.
Our Thought for the week commencing 11 April 2022 was called ‘Misrepresenting Christianity’, and it focused on the support given by Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, for Putin's murderous assault on Ukraine. Throughout the past two and a half years Kirill has continued to stand alongside Putin, who clearly draws on that expression of spiritual support as evidence of justification for his aggression.
There are several routes by which pathways towards peace could be explored, but discussions between religious leaders should be right in the vanguard of that process. If that appearance of spiritual justification could be removed, Putin may well accept the need to step back from his assault. The question is, could Patriarch Kirill be persuaded that God's purpose is not in attacking enemies, let alone those who are neighbours?
Lucy Ash’s new book, The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin, suggests that this would be a hard task; but achieving a Christian consensus on this could open the door to world peace.
Other routes include economic and business sanctions: these are being applied broadly at present, but there are clearly loopholes for unscrupulous businesses — it was very disappointing to read in the Times last week that Unilever has continued with its activities in Russia.
Little detail has emerged from the high-level talks in Washington this weekend concerning the use of missiles, but I hope that somewhere on the agenda there was space for exploring potential pathways to peace. If that did take place, it would of course have been focused on military and strategic considerations: but there is an urgent need to broaden the potential scope for those pathways, and to consider how we might start on that journey.
So far as religious leaders are concerned, I would like to see a clear proposal from Archbishop Justin Welby and the Pope for a meeting in Moscow with Patriarch Kirill. This should be held with the central theme of how to interpret Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5: 44, to love our enemies. Considerable progress could be made in building an atmosphere in which other peace talks could be held if these three leaders could agree that peaceful co-existence is an essential part of Christian teaching, and Justin is well-experienced in the search for reconciliation.
It's unrealistic to think that Russia would agree to a wholesale retreat to internationally-agreed borders at the early stages of any ceasefire, but the return of occupied Ukrainian territory could be treated as a pre-requisite for easing those economic and business sanctions imposed on Russia.
There would also need to be a restoration of displaced people, including more than 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been abducted by Russia, about which Jerry Heil spoke so movingly on CNN last Saturday morning — see #AllEyesOnKids for more details.
Included in such a wide pathway for peace would have to be detailed conversations with China, which needs to be a key player in helping to resolve the situation — and this also would not be easy due to their own ambitions for annexing Taiwan. However, China is a key partner in any resolution of international conflict, and it should always be borne in mind that their population is nearly ten times the size of Russia.
This brings us to the Russian people themselves, and to the need to share the benefits of international integration with them much more visibly in the future. Perhaps Russia’s retreat from the world stage over the past ten years is partly due to the somewhat muted entente cordial following Gorbachev's leadership.
Our vision for a more egalitarian form of capitalism, including inter-generational rebalancing and the issue of tech giants’ stock in return for harvesting people’s data and creativity, needs to be global in application in order to allow all to share in wealth creation, and to have some influence over how the future develops — including people in Russia.
Many might regard these ideas as hopelessly ambitious, but the pathway to peace has to start somewhere. If those three Christian leaders were to agree on their understanding of divine guidance, perhaps it would indeed give peace a chance.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio