Tony Pearce’s article about NATO’s current Ukrainian ‘proxy war’ with Russia (Feb/Mar 2023) contained a number of arguable statements.
The world was kept in the dark about the 2014 US coup in Ukraine, the Maidan horror, the accompanying resurgence of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and the silent, cruel war against the ethnic Russians in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine.
The reason for the current conflict was the refusal of Ukraine to recognise the independence referendum of the two Donbass provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, and officially grant them the right of self-determination and autonomy.
One can hardly call Putin’s military intervention on behalf of these ethnic Russian residents, persecuted by Ukraine for eight years, an invasion.
One can hardly call Putin’s military intervention on behalf of ethnic Russians an invasion
Several false, publicised atrocities were attributed by Western media to Russian forces, yet never retracted. However, inhumane acts by Ukrainian forces against Russian prisoners have been completely ignored. NATO’s destruction of the causeway bridge to Crimea, and the US sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, which constituted a war crime against Russia and Germany, were not censured by the West at all.
A way to bring an end to this war would involve NATO upholding their original agreement with Russia to refuse Ukraine membership. Since NATO’s promise to Russia in 1991 that they would not expand ‘one inch’ to the East, 14 Eastern bloc countries, including Poland, have been admitted to NATO in breach of that agreement, plus the negotiations for Ukraine to also become a member.
NATO’s member states are annually required to maintain a level of armament procurement, hence a NATO-controlled Ukraine would present a very real threat to Russian borders; thereby making Putin’s subsequent action a justifiable defence of his own country’s security. Not to mention the threat posed by the now proven existence of the 34 potentially deadly US bio-weapon labs located in Ukraine.
The claim that the Russians are losing this war is refuted by the higher levels of Ukrainian losses and Zelensky’s ongoing pleas for more armaments and money, despite receiving $40 billion from the US, and tanks from the UK, Germany, the US and Poland.
Western globalists are escalating this into a wider war despite the clear diplomatic resolution available.
A cursory investigation into this war’s background exposes the US and NATO as the prime initiators of the conflict, not Russia… while Ukrainian people and armies on both sides suffer the fall out!
Susette McLachlan, South London
A new way of living
In the early 1980s we were visited by my sister-in-law from the USA.
At the time my wife Carol and I were running a church in the south of Namibia near the Namib desert. My relative encouraged me to wait on the Lord in my times of prayer.
Once doing so, the voice of the good Shepherd began to speak quite clearly within my heart: “When will you begin to build my Church?”
Shocked, I replied: “I have done so for years and in different countries.”
In his own loving way, the Spirit was convicting me that I spent all my time and effort building a legalistic church – and that was not his kind of church.
That realisation changed my life drastically as a minister of God forever. Carol and I moved on in a totally different direction and we became fruitful, fulfilled and happy.
A song that summed up what we were experiencing went: “I found a new way of living, I found a new love divine, I have the fruit of the Spirit, I’m abiding, abiding in the vine…”
Like the religious Pharisees of old I had accumulated many rules, regulations and doctrines and burdened my people with them. But I lacked love, humility, meekness, mercy, loving-kindness, gentleness and forgiveness from the heart… I was like the foolish Galatians who horrified the Apostle Paul.
Now, I have truly developed the heart/spirit of Christ and let myself be led by the gentle dove.
I lacked love, humility, meekness, mercy, loving-kindness, gentleness and forgiveness from the heart
The first things that went out of the window were pride, judgementalism and criticism (the pointing of the finger). I was prompted to give up all of my pet doctrines. I felt that I was losing all my props but in exchange the head of the Church was with me such as never before and still is to this very day.
Carol and I loved people into the Kingdom, accepting them as they were and expecting only the Holy Ghost to advance them into maturity.
I cannot emphasise the principle of “walking in the Spirit” enough. The Apostle Paul said: “Those who walk in the Spirit, they are the sons of God…”
Since the 1980s, God moved us on with his cloudy pillar and we are now in England. Every day we determine in our heart the way God is moving and we move with him.
God is more willing to speak into our lives than we are to listen to him.
Pastor Claude Sammuller, Bournemouth Dorset