The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

During one of my trips to Europe in 2005, I visited the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, Germany.  I wanted to visit this church because in 1982 the pastor of that church, Christian Fuhrer, began Monday prayer meetings to pray for peace amid global violence and the oppressive East German regime.  At first, the number attending these prayer meetings was small but attendance began to swell and spilled over to mass meetings outside the church gates.  On 9 October 1989, 70,000 demonstrators met and peacefully protested.  Over 6,000 East German police stood ready to respond to any provocation.  But, the crowd remained peaceful.  A month later the, Berlin Wall fell.   Christian leaders in Germany and many historians believe that the collapse of communist East Germany occurred because of the prayer meetings that began in 1982 at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig.  Within two years the Soviet empire had collapsed.

Over the next decade, the hope was that post-Communist Russia would rebuild itself around democracy and capitalism.  Indeed, the former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev declared that “All nations should have the opportunity for freedom.”  The new leader of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, encouraged that hope and speculation.  But, by the end of the 20th century, Russia’s GDP had collapsed, its stock market had crashed and Russia had defaulted on its foreign debt—and a former KGB spy—Vladimir Putin—had become president.

As Jonathan Mahler shows, “After his re-election as president in 2012, Putin took Russia in a new direction.  He adopted a crusade of his own against Western ‘decadence’ and ‘the destruction of traditional values’ . . . Putin has done just about everything to reinforce Russia’s identity as America’s spiritual adversary, even describing the West as ‘satanic’ . . . At the same time, he reasserted Russia’s imperial ambitions, first annexing Crimea in 2014 and then invading the rest of Ukraine.”

Tom Rogan, national-security writer for the Washington Examiner, provides an insightful analysis of Putin.  “Donald Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine. The problem is that Mr. Trump sees Vladimir Putin for who he wishes Mr. Putin to be, a hardened but practical interlocutor, rather than for who he is, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who revels in the dark art of ruthless manipulation. Mr. Trump was shaped by the wheeler-dealer New York City real-estate scene. Mr. Putin was shaped by the brutal maximalism of the KGB’s Red Banner Institute.”

During his first term, President Trump made no shortage of startlingly pro-Putin comments, and even sided with Russia’s president against his own intelligence agencies. But in the first few months of his second term, Trump has gone much further, overturning decades of American policy toward an adversary virtually overnight. He has claimed that Ukraine was responsible for its own invasion by Russia and berated Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, during a televised meeting in the Oval Office. His administration also joined North Korea and several other autocratic governments in refusing to endorse a United Nations resolution condemning Russia for the attack. And he has filled his cabinet with like-minded officials, including his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has been described as a “comrade” by Russian state TV.

But, President Trump has apparently come to realize that his assessment of Putin was wrong.  He has openly condemned Putin’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, lamented his unwillingness to negotiate a meaningful cease fire and even called him “crazy.”  As I am writing this, Trump has agreed to send more weapons to Ukraine, even threatening specific sanctions against Russia.  I believe Trump needs to make even stronger pronouncements about Putin’s evil intentions and to denounce his lying and manipulation.

In the remaining parts of this edition of Issues, I seek to reiterate why Vladimir Putin cannot be permitted to win the war in Ukraine.  Congressman Don Bacon provides a helpful perspective from history:  “Moscow’s aggression toward Ukraine goes back more than a century, when the Soviet Union crushed the Ukrainian independence movement. Under Joseph Stalin’s repressive rule, an estimated three million to five million Ukrainians died during the infamous Holodomor ‘death famine’ of the 1930s. Until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, life in Soviet-controlled Ukraine was blighted by collectivization, disappearances, executions and gulags.  In 1994, after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the leaders of the newly independent Ukraine, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States convened in Hungary to sign the Budapest Memorandum. This agreement extended explicit security guarantees for Ukraine—including a commitment by Russia to respect its borders—in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons . . . Twenty years later, in 2014—long after Ukraine had surrendered its nukes—the United States and the rest of Europe shamelessly abandoned these security commitments when Mr. Putin ordered the Russian military to annex and occupy the Crimean Peninsula. Speeches were made and a few sanctions imposed, but the West permitted Mr. Putin’s naked aggression to stand, paving the way for his full-scale invasion in February 2022.  This history makes clear that America has a moral obligation to continue providing aid to Ukraine until Russia commits to fair and just peace negotiations. That means including Ukraine in the conversation.”

As the war enters its fourth year, Americans understandably question why the United States should continue supporting Ukraine.  Bacon argues that “Supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression is not only morally right. It is also in our national interest, because the future cost of abandoning Ukraine would vastly outweigh the investment we have made in rejecting Russia’s aggression.  A Russian victory in this war would quickly and predictably extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Mr. Putin’s statements and actions make it abundantly clear that he seeks to restore the old Soviet borders and regain the former glory of Imperial Russia. Fancying himself a modern-day Peter the Great, he views Georgia, Moldova and the Baltic republics as ‘renegade states’ and the rightful property of Russia.  Failing to stand up to bullies only leads to larger and costlier conflicts. If Mr. Putin succeeds, it will embolden other authoritarian regimes—such as China, Iran and North Korea—to take similar aggressive actions against their neighbors. This could trigger a series of conflicts that threaten American interests and global stability . . . Supporting Ukraine is also about sending a clear message to authoritarian leaders worldwide that America will not appease or condone the violent conquest of the weak by the strong. The administration must be crystal clear that we are aligned with democracy, free markets and the rule of law. If we stray from these values, we risk losing what makes America a great nation.  Peace won’t be easy, but we must reject the trap of making a false choice. It is possible to end the war for Ukraine, preserve our moral clarity by holding Russia accountable and advance America’s long-term national interests in the process.”

Columnist David French adds that “There is no scenario in which a Russian triumph is in America’s best interest. A Russian victory would not only expand Russia’s sphere of influence, it would represent a human rights catastrophe (Russia has engaged in war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population since the beginning of the war) and threaten the extinction of Ukrainian national identity. It would reset the global balance of power.  In addition, a Russian victory would make World War III more, not less, likely. It would teach Vladimir Putin that aggression pays, that the West’s will is weak and that military conquest is preferable to diplomatic engagement. China would learn a similar lesson as it peers across the strait at Taiwan.  If Vladimir Putin is stopped now—while Ukraine and the West are imposing immense costs in Russian men and materiel—it will send the opposite message, making it far more likely that the invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s last war, not merely his latest.”

As with the Christians in Leipzig in 1982 who began praying that God would free them from the oppression of Soviet communism, I believe we should begin fervent praying that God would defeat Putin’s blatant aggression in Ukraine and that He would motivate our president to wholeheartedly support Ukraine’s desire to remain free and independent.  More than anything else, the matter of supporting Ukraine is one of the most important moral issues of our time.  May God grant us the desire to intercede for Ukraine and to give this nation the support it needs.

See Jonathan Mahler’s article in the New York Times Magazine (20 April 2025), pp. 19-21; Tom Rogan in the Wall Street Journal (14 May 2025); Don Bacon in the New York Times (1 April 2025: and David French in the New York Times (16 September 2024).