The religious roots of Ukrainian resistance

Many Western observers have missed the deeply religious dimensions of Ukrainian identity – and Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression.

Religious leaders gather at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 2, 2022, to pray for peace, despite the city being shelled with Russian rockets. (CNS photo/risu.ua)

As chilling as morally serious people find Vladimir Putin, his evident pleasure in humiliating his subordinates, and his wanton cruelty in brutalizing those who defy him (be they domestic opponents or countries that refuse to bend to his will), I must confess that I find Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, even more repulsive. In the six decades that I have been following international affairs – dating back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the good School Sisters of Notre Dame were showing us how to “shelter” under our desks at Baltimore’s Cathedral School – I cannot remember a more blatant or disgusting liar than Mr. Lavrov. Students of history might have thought that the foreign minister of the Third Reich, the former champagne salesman Joachim von Ribbentrop, had retired the gold medal for foreign ministerial mendacity. Mr. Lavrov has proven them wrong – you can indeed be worse than Ribbentrop.

During a March 3 press conference in Moscow, Lavrov continued to defend the Russian “special military operation” (not “war”) in Ukraine as an effort to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” that country, and promised that the “operation” would continue until the “weapons and infrastructure that threaten” Russia are destroyed. The despicable use of the “Nazi” moniker against a country led by a democratically elected president of Jewish heritage has been a constant theme of Lavrov’s propaganda over the past week and more, and is itself cringe-inducing, no matter how often repeated.

But what kind of man, speaking for what kind of regime, sanitizes the conduct of Russia’s war on Ukraine by speaking of destroying the “infrastructure that threatens us?”

What threat to Russia was posed by the regional governmental headquarters in Kharkiv, deliberately destroyed by Russian forces? How did the Holocaust Memorial at Babyn Yar, struck by a Russian missile, threaten Putin and his regime? How do apartment buildings gutted by Russian bombs and missiles pose a threat to the Kremlin? How does the use of cluster bombs and thermobaric vacuum bombs that cause massive casualties in the hundreds if not thousands enhance Russia’s national security? Are the Ukrainian babies being born in bomb shelters, because hospitals are not safe, a threat to Mr. Lavrov and the regime for which he fronts?

The Russian military leadership has never been casualty-averse; World War II Russian hero Marshal Georgi Zhukov used to clear mine fields by marching his infantry through them as if the mines didn’t exist, he once told General Dwight D. Eisenhower. That traditional callousness extends to civilians, as the human toll taken by Russian artillery fire and air strikes in Grozny and Aleppo – and now Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol’, and other Ukrainian cities – has proven.

Yet Putin, Lavrov, and company cannot trust their own people with the truth of what they are doing in Ukraine. On March 2, the Russian defense ministry finally released “official” casualty figures from its “special military operation,” claiming 500 Russian dead. That is at least one-tenth of the true number, and the fact that the Russian forces are accompanied by mobile cremation units suggests that the Putin regime is threatened, not by Ukraine, but by the fear of thousands of body bags returning to Russia and further enflaming civic protests against Putin’s war – protests that continue despite mass arrests and an attempt to shut down all independent reporting on the war in Ukraine.

Further underscoring the Putin regime’s paranoia about its own people, the Russian parliament, so called, will soon consider a law making criticism of the Russian military a criminal offense punishable by lengthy prison terms.

Its blitzkrieg strategy having failed because of fierce Ukrainian resistance and Russian tactical incompetence, it now seems clear that the Russian regime intends to subdue Ukraine by a vicious campaign of attrition aimed at civilians and civilian infrastructure, Putin evidently finding the potential annexation of a smoldering ruin more attractive than further humiliation. That the West must do more to counter this barbarism is obvious. That “more” that includes massive weapons resupply to Ukraine, including drones and other airborne weaponry that can reduce Russian armored columns to heaps of junk. Sanctions against the Russian economy, Putin and the political leadership, and the oligarchs who have been enriched by Putin must be intensified.

There are some signs that elements of the FSB, the Russian security service, oppose the war; recent reports from reputable sources in Ukraine indicated that disaffected FSF personnel alerted Ukraine to a Putin-ordered assassination attempt against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, which was subsequently foiled. Every effort should be made by western intelligence services to encourage that opposition and hasten the day when rationality and moral sanity is restored to Russian foreign policy.

An important question remains, however: How, amidst this increasing Russian brutality, is Ukraine managing, not only to sustain military, paramilitary, and civilian resistance to the invader, but to grow that resistance?

One part of the answer lies in the transformation of civic culture that began in Ukraine with the 2013-2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” centered on the Maidan, Kyiv’s Independence Square. Western media and politicians focused on national-level politicians and the often-corrupt oligarchy still in place in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution have largely missed the slow but steady development of a civil culture of responsibility and solidarity at the Ukrainian grass roots. The wounds of seventy years of Soviet depredations, which had taught Ukrainians to mistrust each other, were beginning to heal over the past eight years, and the current war has vastly accelerated that healing process.

The results are evident in the way the country has become more unified than ever before. Thus it seems fitting that a besieged country led by a Jewish president is manifesting the moral wisdom of Hillel the Elder, a Jewish sage who died over two thousand years ago: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I?”

Western observers also tend to miss the deeply religious dimensions of Ukrainian identity – and Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. With the possible exception of Poland, Ukraine is the most religiously observant country in Europe. A large proportion, perhaps even a majority, of the practicing Orthodox Christians who have traditionally looked to the Russian Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow for leadership are in Ukraine. Divided since the Maidan Revolution into separate jurisdictions, Ukrainian Orthodox leaders have nonetheless condemned the Russian invasion and war, even as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow betrays his flock by continuing to play lapdog to the czar.

Then there is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, some five million souls who exert an influence in the country far beyond their numbers. The UGCC has been blessed for the past century and a quarter with exceptional leadership. The Servant of God Andrew Sheptytsky led the Church from 1901 until his death in 1944 and was a leading figure in a renaissance of Ukrainian culture, language, and literature. Under his guidance, the UGCC became one of the principal safe deposit boxes of Ukrainian national identity during the hard decades when the Soviet Union did everything in its power – from the deliberate starvation of millions to the enforced use of Russian in schools and public administration – to Russify Ukraine and bring the country to heel.

Little wonder, then, that Metropolitan Andrew’s worthy and hand-picked successor, Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj (the model for the Slavic pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman) spent seventeen years in the Gulag labor camps, as the Church he led became the largest underground (i.e., illegal) religious community in the world, after the UGCC was “reunited” at virtual gunpoint to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1946. Released from the Gulag in 1963, Slipyj lived in Rome (the Soviet Union refusing to allow him back into its territory), traveled the world strengthening the Ukrainian Greek Catholic diaspora, and laid the foundations on which today’s vibrant UGCC is helping build – and now defend – the Ukraine of which Sheptytsky and Slipyj dreamed, and for which they gave their lives.

Perhaps the most consequential of Metropolitan Slipyj’s efforts was the rebuilding of a theological academy in Rome which, after Ukraine’s liberation from the Soviet Union in 1991, became the seed from which grew what is now Ukraine’s finest institution of higher learning, the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. From the outset, UCU, led by the now-Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparch of Philadelphia, Borys Gudziak, was an institution with a defined and noble mission: to rebuild the shattered civil society of Ukraine by being a center of teaching, and living in, the truth. Its students and faculty were on the Maidan in 2013-2014, where one of the university faculty was shot by a sniper. Today, UCU is a beacon of truth-telling about the war in Ukraine (exemplified by the indispensable daily YouTube videos posted by one of its theology faculty members, Taras Tymo), even as its people help organize relief for refugees and displaced persons and prepare for what seems an inevitable Russian military assault on Lviv.

Ukrainian national identity, in brief, is very much informed by Ukrainian Christianity. Under the leadership of Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, head of the UGCC from 2001 to 2011, and the current Major-Archbishop, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the UGCC has played a major role in healing ecumenical fractures among Ukraine’s Christian communities: another step in solidifying the sense of national solidarity that has thus far confounded the deeds of wicked men like Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov.

(Note: Major-Archbishop Shevchuk’s messages to his people and the world from a Kyivan bomb shelter make exemplary Lenten reading, even as they embody what heroic Catholic leadership looks like in twenty-first century. The messages for March 1, March 2, and March 3 are available online here, here, and here.)


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About George Weigel 483 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

18 Comments

  1. I am watching the daily briefing from Ukrainian Catholic Taras Tymo, and the numerous reports from other sources embedded in Ukraine.

    I hope that free people in Western and Central Europe and the US, UK, Canada and others pour thousands of antitank rockets and stringer missiles and millions of small arms and a legion of foreign fighting volunteers to give Putin snd the Russian Army the fury of the whirlwind and the righteous might of the Angel of Death.

    And I hope that the disgusting Western political elites like bought-off-Boy-Biden and the repulsive self-serving Paris-Accord-Hypocrites-Drinking-the-Russian-Oil get shamed into hearing every day what they are: Soaked in the Blood of Ukrainian people and bewildered Russian conscripts, who pay with their lives for the disgusting, self-congratulatory lip service to “Green-Energy” while they pay Putin $100 a barrel for his oil so he can buy bullets to slaughter the innocent.

    Right now, the Western political establishment is nauseating.

    • Strange…Russia could easily make the “religious roots” argument too. Currently the Ukrainian military has the Nazi inspired AZOV battalion doing its real dirty work like setting up weaponry in heavily populated areas. Who does this? One who wants genocide. Our Lady of Fatima, save us in the folds of your mantle!

    • Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of the reasons he got into politics.

      After leaving his career as a comedian and entertainer and becoming Ukraine’s president in April 2019, Zelenskyy hailed Trudeau as “one of those leaders who inspired” him “to join politics,” when he became Ukraine’s president in 2019.

      While Zelenskyy has shot to stardom from relative obscurity from the perspective of the West since the Russo-Ukrainian conflict became international news last week, his admiration for Trudeau comes as less of a surprise when looking into his background.

      Like Trudeau, Zelenskyy is an acolyte of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, the globalist organization behind the now-infamous “Great Reset” agenda, which tells the world that by the year 2030, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”

      The ubiquitous support for Zelenskyy by the elite, including support from “defund the police” and Black Lives Matter leftist mega-donor George Soros, Trudeau, American President Joe Biden, and all sides of mainstream media, has led many to question the true motivation behind the West’s condemnation of Russia and a concern that a push for yet another foreign war involving the West is underfoot.

      On Tuesday, for example, Ukrainian journalist Daria Kaleniuk made an emotional demand to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, asking him to instruct NATO to enter the war in Ukraine. After the event was praised in Western media, reports surfaced showing that Kaleniuk is not just a journalist, but a member of the WEF and runs initiatives backed by Soros throughout Eastern Europe.

      • Thank you Thaddeus for saying what so many refuse to hear. Two years of lying and the people.still roll over. It is so depressing.

      • But assuming that all of this is true, Vladimir Putin was not entitled to launch a “special military operation” (typical KGB Orwellian phrase there) against Ukraine. And I can’t imagine Trudeau mustering the courage and poise that Zelensky has maintained in response. Whatever his previous positions, he’s certainly risen to to occasion, wouldn’t you say?

  2. More secular nonsense from Weigel the neocon.

    He just does not believe in the universal Faith that allows proper opinion of paticular events revealed at Fatima that Russia shall be converted and is chosen by God.

    Weigel is a boring writer whose articles are like newspaper politics and not about the spiritual realm.

  3. Russia isn’t religious. Only Catholics are religious, and Russia isn’t Catholic.

    “One part of the answer lies in the transformation of civic culture that began in Ukraine with the 2013-2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” centered on the Maidan, Kyiv’s Independence Square.”

    My understanding is that this was US backed. It may have been unjustified.

  4. George Weigel is a good writer. Thank you for “The religious roots of Ukrainian resistance” March 4, 2022.

  5. The tragedy is two nations with large Christian populations at war. Let us pray and offer Mass intentions that God has mercy on the people of Ukraine.

  6. What fools sadly sit and watch young men, women, and children slaughtered before your eyes. We are complicit by supplying weapons. This killing can be stopped. It is of no use to curse Putin. Russia will make Ukraine a neutral satellite, and there is nothing we can do about it. If there is anything left of it. Disputes are not resolved by war, but by smart negotiating. Civilized people can only sit and watch this for so long. It would be honorable for Zekensky to make a deal and save the lives of the women and children he is responsible for. But then, of course he will lose his job. Is all the death worth it? There is such a thing as an honorable and humane surrender. This is “text book” how world wars are started. Stop the killing!

    • Have you seen what happens to those who’ve tried to negotiate with the leftist globalizers now running NATO and most of the west? While hiding behind the veneer of a media-driven legitimacy, they are completely devoid of morality, honesty, and truth. Putin is a bad man but Putin is right, they are Nazis. How many lies do we have to see and swallow before we see the truth? Power is the only language they speak. THEY ALONE are the reason for this crisis. Putin is not going to unilaterally surrender to them as we did. Ukraine and even nuclear war if necessary are his ONLY option. Just because he is a wicked even Stalin-like figure doesn’t mean he should give in to the globalist propaganda-driven agenda and their “great” reset. Putin knows the score…and unlike our leaders, he intends to stand up to them EVEN if it takes the whole world down in the process. Mr. Henry said, “give me liberty or give me death”. Putin’s statements reflect the same commitment…without the liberty part.

  7. >> With the possible exception of Poland, Ukraine is the most religiously observant country in Europe. A large proportion, perhaps even a majority, of the practicing Orthodox Christians who have traditionally looked to the Russian Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow for leadership are in Ukraine.

    The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarch.

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