If order is the attainable and justice the possible, then (re)conciliation is the desirable. Conciliation is future-focused in that it sees former enemies as partners in a shared future.

The West is not responsible for Putin’s war. But Western democracies are responsible for whether they live by the values that set them apart from the values that animate Putin’s imperial fantasy, and for whether they defend those values against attack.

The Russian Federation’s expulsion from the Council of Europe on March 16, 2022, and its forthcoming exit from the European Convention on Human Rights were precipitated by the invasion of Ukraine. But they follow a long and fraught history of conflict between Russia and European human rights institutions, a story that holds lessons about the proper purpose and composition of international formations aimed at protecting and promoting human rights.

In an age when the word hero is conflated with and attached to movie stars and athletes and people who risk nothing of consequence, it’s bracing to watch—even from afar—true heroes and true heroism in action.

Mass moral atrocities and genocidal tendencies have not lessened with the supposed end of the Cold War. If anything, they have increased.

So now I will pray for all Russian dissenters, who are in great peril. And I will pray for Vladimir Putin, too.

As the world turns its attention to Ukraine, the important but often neglected issue of Orthodox Christian geopolitics has received renewed interest from Western media.

That Russia’s invasion should have come as a surprise attack largely derives from the idealistic excess of the democratic peace theory.

Whatever Putin’s eventual demise, we will gratefully pray, Thy will be done.