Ideas - How Christian ethics can inform a resolution in Russia's war in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

How can religion help decode the motives for Russia's aggression against Ukraine? And how can Judeo-Christian ethics inform a way forward for peace? Ukrainian Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, and historian of Central European politics Timothy Snyder explore these questions.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Dear friend of Ukraine, this is a big emotion for me to be tonight here with you.

It is my maybe honor and duty this evening to be a voice of Ukraine. Last week, just after Russia's war in Ukraine passed its third year mark, two major Ukrainian figures flew from Kyiv to North America. One was the worldwide head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, who was met with a warm welcome in Toronto. Coming from Kyiv, I think my voice is not only the voice of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, but also suffering people of Ukraine. Maybe also our brothers and sisters in Crimea, in Donetsk, in Luhansk. The other was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What's your message for them?

You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, Hi, Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal? That doesn't work that way. Who was met at the Oval Office with an ambush. You're either going to make a deal or we're out. And if we're out, I don't think it's going to be pretty. But you don't have the cards. But once we sign that deal, you're in a much better position. But you're not acting at all thankful.

It was an unsightly revelation. All right, I think we've seen enough. What do you think? This is going to be great television, I will say that. The abrupt realignment of the United States with Russia, leaving the U.S. standing at odds with all other Western nations, including Canada. And still leaving Ukraine completely out of Washington's proposed peace deal. Glory be to Jesus Christ!

Glory to Jesus Christ! You may be seated. But in his talk at the University of Toronto, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk offered a different path to peace. His talk was called War, Peace and Truth. And in it, he tries to show how a faith tradition can help decode Russia's aggression against Ukraine and how that tradition may be able to clear a way forward to peace. This is a special moment in behalf of those who suffer in Ukraine to be able to talk to you,

people of Canada. In the great Canadian tradition of welcoming those who have suffered at the hand of violence and evil, Canada has received nearly 300,000 displaced Ukrainians since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine. I know that the USA received 350,000. Your hospitality is and has been outstanding. Your unity as a nation indicates a resolve to welcome the stranger and to stand against tyranny and international aggression. Your support contributes to achieving a just peace for Ukraine.

For the goodwill and hope that Canada has shared with us, today, this evening, I express the profound gratitude of all Ukrainians. Thank you very much for being with us. (*applause*) Yesterday, the world marked the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In two days, we will also mark 11 years since Russia's initial act of aggression, its claim to Crimea and war in Donbas.

Today, we stand potentially at the doorstep of yet another year of a raid, Syrians. Another year of carnage, terror, and death. In few days, I'll be coming back to Kiev, and again, I will see new destruction, new buildings are gone, new people will be killed probably. And any moment of possibility to meet people for us in Kiev would be the last one.

What will succeed in forcing Putin to abandon his plans? Plans to destroy my people, my country, my church. To obliterate an international order based on law and human rights. And to exploit what he purports to be the impotence of the democratic world. After three years of war, I can say with certainty only our moral clarity, our unity in courage, and our joint decisive action by God's grace. This war has turned into a deadly marathon in which Ukrainians must sprint, not only run, to avoid defeat. Today I ask you to run with us, fast father of the Church, to encourage you to understand the true meaning of a just peace and how your words, your actions, and your prayers can

contribute to safe and peaceful future for Ukraine and in turn for the West. A year ago, the bishops of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine published a letter to encourage their people during this time of strife. We emphasized that whatever force Ukraine uses against its enemy must be done in defense of the innocent and vulnerable, and that the highest priority for Ukraine on the path to ending the war is just peace.

On this path toward a just peace, the government of Canada, along with other Western nations, has generously donated billions of dollars for Ukrainian defense, Ukraine economy and humanitarian needs. Canadians may rest assured that they are back in a just resistance and that your aid is used properly and most effectively.

Your contributions protect the innocent and provide for vulnerable Ukrainians across the country, of whom there are 13 million, a full 30% of the population. For this life-saving generosity, the people of Ukraine are deeply grateful. However, just peace for Ukraine requires not only material support, but unshakable and unbending commitment to defend the truth. There is no justice without truth. And there is no authentic peace without justice. Ukrainians need the clear recognition by the West states of the type of violence that is being

perpetrated against the victim. And I suppose you know who is the aggressor and who is the victim. And you know who is the aggressor and who is the victim. Throughout this war, lies have multiplied about the Ukrainian people. These lies, beyond the bombs and the ammunition, have caused devastation to the Ukrainian people and to their identity. Ukrainians have a legitimate need to uphold a basic moral principle – the defense of one's honor and good name. In the Bible, To name is to bless. To name is also to bestow a power. When God reveals His name to Moses in the burning bush, He shares with Moses the power

that liberates captives. In the New Testament, God takes the name Jesus, Savior. God saves for the sake of true peace. To tear down the wall of enmity between God and men and between the warring factions in the world. The great Ukrainian scholar and statement Mikhailo Horushevsky once said, we are the people whose name has been stolen. The defense of Ukraine then is to protect the God-given dignity of our people, of our name in the biblical sense. It is why very often Russian propaganda will say that Ukraine does not exist. There is no Ukrainian nation, people, language, culture, even the church.

Ukraine is only territory. It is why they try to make a deal discussing about the territories. Russian propaganda at the time of Rusevsky and now aims to discredit the name of our nation. It aims to convince the West that this current war should not concern it. That is futile to impede Russia's imperial agenda and expansionist, revisionist objectives. Russia portrays in Ukraine a failed state, a traumatized society with no authentic national identity. Furthermore, Putin claims Ukraine is a threat to Russia, an aggressor, unwilling to conduct

realistic peace negotiations and unreasonable in its insistence on a just peace. Sometimes we Ukrainians are asked, especially in the last week in Washington, don't you want to stop the war? If yes, what or whom are you willing to sacrifice to stop the fighting? It is indeed a difficult question, because it is not a question only of territory. It is first and foremost a question of our people, our nation, our faithful, our children? What compromise should we make regarding the dignity of our people? How many of our faithful should be deprived from their freedom of religion? Can we negotiate the dignity of Harku or make a deal about a dignity of Zaporizhzhia or Odessa?

Allow me to formulate a few dystopian questions emerging from imagined, nightmarish North American scenarios. May such hellish scripts never become reality. But, you know, let's think together. Thus, in the United States, one might ask, if pressed by overwhelming power propaganda, racist policy, how many Afro-Americans are you ready to return to the slavery?

In Canada, one could theoretically ask, are there any circumstances in which Canadian authorities would again mandate taking indigenous nation children away from their parents in order to assimilate them into the colonizing culture? But crimes against humanity like those, tortures, bondage are the reality on the Russian war and occupation. Abduction of the tenth of thousands of Ukrainian children and their brainwashing to hate Ukraine

is a constituent element of Russia's overwhelming social policy. Colonial neo-imperialism that resorts to genocidal tragedies is exactly what today's Russian world is all about. Ukrainians will never return to a colonial status. Never again. Ukrainians will never submit to genocidal policies. Our people will not surrender their culture, religious and social liberty. Ukrainians will never sacrifice their children.

At this point in his talk, Archbishop Shevchuk began referring to something called Ruski Mir. It's a vague term, which literally means Russian world, and in its most benign sense, it means places and people which have connections to Russian history and culture. But Ruski Mir now has menacing connotations, especially after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, meaning a way of looking at the world that would justify Russian imperialism and the rewriting of history that would obliterate Ukraine's existence. Russian authorities propagandize the existence of so-called Ruski Mir, or the Russian world. And as you know, in Russian, мир very often has a meaning of peace. Мир

could be translated as world or peace. What kind of peace that world of Russian propaganda and slavery can give us a future? Русский мир is an ideology that envisioned the privileged moral civilization of Holy Russia against the corrupt West. Ruski-Mir proposes Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, as its birthplace. It is where Prince Volodymyr of Kiev consecrated his nation of Rus by massive baptism

on the banks of the Dnieper River in 988. Therefore, Russia's prolonged aggression into Ukraine aims not simply to conquer territory, but to rewrite history and to instrumentalize religion as a service of this ideology. Describing this phenomenon of the instrumentalization of religion for the proposals of the Ruski Mir, we talk about the weaponization of religion.

That kind of mutilated Christianity proposes the religion as instrument, which really kills. To assert the myth of Ruski Mir requires the eradication of Ukraine. Ukraine's very existence testifies that Ruski Mir and its claim to a holy origins is a baseless and blasphemous fiction. To build its empire, Russia must annihilate the name of Ukraine. In support of their agenda,

Russian media and propaganda outlets have disseminated lies about Ukraine. Regrettably, this diversion has deluded respected scholars, public intellectuals, and politicians in many Western countries. Let us not be deceived about the ends of Russia and Putin's purpose. Putin has, without confusion, very clear, explicit genocidal intentions, very clear geopolitical goals, those goals with horrible clarity we have seen in Bucza, in Irpin, in Mariupol, in any territory which Russians was able to overcome. On other contexts, Putin has brutalized populations to achieve those goals.

He thinks nothing of manufacturing chaos and division in societies aside from his own, occupying parts of Georgia, raising the Chechen capital Grozny, sending state-founded Wagner mercenaries to terrorize people in African states, and demolishing Syrian cities, forcing millions of men, women, and children to flee their homeland. In each of these contexts, Russia and Russian-supported soldiers committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. These soldiers disregarded millions of lives to receive high military honors from Putin.

Putin's motives also impact the Church directly. If Russia succeeds in occupying Ukraine, our Church will be liquidated again. And that is already happening in the occupied territories. In the past three centuries, each time Russia has occupied lands inhabited by Eastern Catholics, they have been forced to convert to Russian orthodoxy, were driven into exile, or sent to perish in Gulag. In God's providence, we have survived each attempt of annihilation and we live to witness to the truth of Gothpol. And I'm here today as a survivor.

In Ukraine, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is an integral part of society. Our commitment to be close to our people on the front lines comes at a high cost and great peril. Russian troops have destroyed almost all our parishes in Russian occupied territories in eastern Ukraine. They have confiscated our churches, our monasteries, and looted our property. Last June, two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests, both Redemptorists, Fr. Bohdan Heleta and Ivan Levitsky, were restored in their freedom after more

than 18 months of imprisonment, torture, and humiliation at the hands of the Russian military. Ukrainian solidarity and resilience have come at a price. We learn that freedom is never for granted, and right now we are paying the highest price for freedom. But there is no other choice in the face of evil. We must continue to speak this truth, defend the sanctity of human life and the honor of

our name, of our very identity. We know that great risk involved, but we maintain our resolve, trusting in the Lord's promise. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. You're listening to Ideas, where a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.c.a.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c.c I'm Nala Ayed. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. In December, Archbishop Shevchuk celebrated Christmas in a Keeve bomb shelter. When he was growing up, he and millions of others had to practice their faith in secret as it was illegal in the USSR.

And now with Russia's war in Ukraine in its fourth year, his country is fighting for its life. I continually wrestle with the pain of my people, of their feelings of abandonment and isolation amidst such a destruction. As a pastor, I share in their grief of those people, tens of thousands, whose loved ones have been killed or injured in this war, and of the millions who have been displaced from their homes and have lost everything.

I have seen their broken hearts, their shattered spirits. If you could see their faces, you too would know that all they desire is a peace, a just peace. Since Ukraine independence in 1991, the Ukrainian people have demonstrated their desire for peace through concrete actions in the global stage. As Pope Francis has noted, and so many people have forgotten, just three years after independence in December 1994, Ukraine disarmed its nuclear arsenal, which at that time was larger than of the United Kingdom, France and China combined, a courageous step such as this would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

As well, despite its history of Soviet oppression, Ukraine has worked to replicate the values of Western stability, rule of law, and human rights. Ukraine experienced peaceful revolutions in 1990, 2004, and 2013, and demonstrated its profound commitment to democracy and freedom. We became an independent country in its profound commitment to democracy and freedom. We became an independent country in 1991, not because of the post-Soviet politicians

were committed to the values of freedom and democracy, no. But because the people of Ukraine made the choice in the referendum of December 1st, 1991. We reaffirmed our will to be a democratic European nation, not because somebody in Europe was waiting for us, no, but because this was our choice of our future. That was the situation of so-called revolution of dignity. And even today, three years ago, war erupted.

We received worldwide support, even military, not because somebody in West was afraid of Russia, but because Ukrainian soldiers were demonstrating that Russia can and should be stopped. We assured freedom of press and public expression, religious freedom and the peaceful coexistence and fraternal collaboration between churches and religious organizations. Our country conducted peaceful transition of power from one free elected president to another until Russia disrupted our democratic cycle by trying to impose its autocratic ways.

Today the free world recognizes that Ukrainians hold to principles of freedom even during a time of martial law, despite the centralizing influences that this tends to have. Ukrainians who are enduring untold suffering, losing family members and homes, and crippled and traumatized by the cruelties of war, crave and long for peace. We want peace with all our hearts and all our souls. Those of us who are believers in Christ may take heart in the promise that blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.

But we don't want just any peace. We want a just peace, a sustainable peace, one that does not compromise our name. A just peace first requires the honest recognition of the violence and dehumanization that has befallen the Ukrainian people. This will be impossible if we do not have the support of those Western nations we have in creating a society that promotes law, justice and human dignity. My Canadian brothers and sisters, I understand that a war happening thousands of kilometers

away can be hard to comprehend. I understand that you may believe that the stakes are not as high for you as they are for the millions of Ukrainians who do not know how and what tomorrow will bring. But I want to tell you that this war is closer to Canadians than you can even think or imagine. New Ukrainian immigrants to Canada, whom you have welcomed and integrated in your schools, workplaces, churches and communities, bring this reality home. Scores of Canadian volunteers have also risked their lives to care for those in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is an offence against world peace, which is a value Canadians hold dear and work to promote around the world. Let us also not forget that Ukraine fights on behalf of democracy.

Russia's goal is not simply the annexation of Ukraine to fulfill its ideological claims. Russia aims to remake the world order, to insert its arbitrary will to interfere in the affairs of other countries, whether through war or the support of the authoritarian regimes. What Putin wants, making a deal with someone in the West, to be able to put his hands in your pocket, to be able to corrupt your politicians, to interfere in your elections, to poison your mind and your heart. So in the future you will not be able to even distinguish between good and evil. Should world leaders demand concession of Ukraine without a promise of security, it would give the permission to other authoritarian global actors to take what they want without

any threat of retaliation. Our Bishop Brian helped me to learn a Canadian proverb which saying, accept means promote. If you will accept those Russian claims, you will promote them and you will be the first victims of that deal and that promotion. Yet history proves that totalitarian regimes such as Russia are fragile. In the recent talks with our Orthodox brethren, I remember my talk with the former Patriarch Filaret, he was telling to me, don't be afraid of Russia,

because Russia is blackmailing whole the world as it would be a Soviet Union, but without Ukraine, Russia never will be great again. (*audience applauds*) Sustainable peace can come about through the combined pressure of Ukraine and its allies to thwart imperial intentions. Ukraine and the entire free world can only win together or lose together? Given all I have shared, I want to conclude by suggesting three concrete actions you can take within your spheres of influence in your daily life to help Ukrainians maintain the freedom, identity and future.

So three concrete proposals, three good deeds, three very effective actions. First, seek reliable sources of information on the situation in Ukraine. Whether countering claims in the media, on social media, or in personal interactions, think critically and ask the proper questions. Who is propagating the information and how reliable is the source? Engage with the reputable cultural

and educational organizations, such as Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Catholic Studies here at the University of St. Michael College. Through the Institute, grow in knowledge about our history, our people, and our faith, which impels us forward and gives us the trust, hope and strength for perseverance. Take opportunities to be vigilant in speaking the truth in your own communities, countering lies and misinformation wherever they arise. Saint Paul reminds us, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,

for we are members of one another. I ask that you refuse to subscribe to or propagate the lies that have been contributing to the suppression, degradation or elimination of my people. We must be sure that in the face of lies, we are a bearer of truth. So Augustine would say that we have no need to defend the truth, because truth is like a lion. We have to free that lion.

Truth has its own power and always will overcome any kind of a fly. In the face of despair, we are messengers of hope. And I'm here to be a witness of the hope. Hope from Ukraine. Ukraine still stands, still fights and still pray. In the face of violence, we are peacemakers. We are those who cherish authentic human relationships. And it is why I'm here to embrace you, to express our gratitude and to look for new friends. Second, with the truth in hand, pray for Ukraine.

You know, in Ukraine, in these these three years we learned that prayer is not a magic formula which you have to repeat. Prayer is a space of life, space of healing the wounds, a space when God and man can share and interchange the gifts, prayer is a space of resilience. It is why we can say, we are praying, we pray, we are praying each day, and it is why in the prayer is source of our hope. Pray for an end to this war and adjust peace. Pray for our world leaders, for their conversion, for the conversion of those who propagate lies and commit atrocities,

since God desires all to come to the truth. So first, it was about information. The second, about a prayer. And third, good deeds, authentic work of solidarity. Continue your generous, tangible solidarity. According to a recent assessment of the United Nations, prepared in collaboration with Ukrainian and international NGOs, almost 13 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian assistance. Ukraine is half a way around the world, but the Ukrainian people are suffering and need the support of those who enjoy peace. In this way, throughout the past century,

Canada has been a loyal and faithful friend to the people and countries in need of peace. Looking to our friends in Canada, we seek additional strength to triumph over injustice. In this context, again, stand against the temptation to turn inward. Do not get wary of Ukraine. The temptation that would have us forget our brother and sisters in need in foreign lands would be very dangerous for Canada. That would leave us focused only on our national concerns.

Keep advocating for your government to provide the aid and resources we so desperately need. Continue supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine through trustworthy Canadian organizations, church-run organizations, such as Catholic Near East Welfare Association, KNEVA, and other church organizations. KNEVA is connected to Ukraine's nationwide humanitarian network and directly found programs that care for millions of internally displaced people, single parents, families, traumatized children, and vulnerable seniors and adults.

There are many Canadian, Ukrainian, and international church and community organizations that help and that you already know continue work with them. Ukraine knows the Canadian spirit of giving, and we hope we continue to rely on your support in our efforts to achieve peace. Remember the word of Jesus. Surely I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me. If we engage in these three activities together – to advocate, to pray, and to help as one body in Christ, we can stand firm against the darkness that comes with lies and violence and proclaim with unwavering conviction, evil will not prevail.

Truth, love and justice. This will endure. And it is why Ukraine will prevail. Russia should be defeated. Glory to Jesus Christ, glory to Ukraine! Archbishop Shevchuk, or as he's formally referred to, his Beatitude, was then joined on stage by American historian Timothy Snyder, who's written widely on populism, fascism, and authoritarianism in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Professor Snyder is also one of the world's preeminent experts on Eastern Europe's past and present. So, His Beattitude and I agreed that I would say a few words in response, if that's the correct way to think about it. So I want to begin with a very recent recollection. A few days ago, I was in Zaporizhzhia in the Ukrainian Southeast. I was invited to help open a school, and it was a very particular kind of school. The school was underground, not underground in the political sense, but underground in the physical sense. In about six months, Ukrainians in Zapotec had built a new school entirely underground.

And of course, this audience will know why, which is that Zapotec is very close to the front. And so a Russian missile will take about 40 seconds to reach the city. And so in response to this, a school was built underground. And I was able to greet the students on one of the first days in school. And these little kids, kindergartners, first graders, second graders, third graders, even fourth graders,

or however you call them in Canada, they, you know what I mean. It was the first time they'd been in an actual school, two years of COVID and three years of war. It was the first time they had been in an actual school. And so I asked them, how do you like this? Is it better than being at home? And they all jumped up and they talked about how wonderful it was to be in school and how the teachers could explain things to them and how they could be with their friends.

And I was thinking about this as I listened to his attitude because it strikes me that there were two kinds of truth in what they were saying. There was the truth, the factual truth, that you learn more when you're in a school with other people, but there was also the human truth. There was the truth that they were actually there together. There was their existence. There was the fact of the school, which isn't just an objective fact, but a kind of subjective fact. And I was thinking about this as well in connection to another part of this trip. I had the pleasure of giving a lecture about Ukraine and the Sorbonne, which was a very formal event, and it was a lifelong dream of mine to give a lecture at the Sorbonne, and I finally did it.

And it was a very good conversation with a Ukrainian philosopher called Volodya Molenko, some of you will know. And then as I walked out, and it was at this incredibly fancy lecture hall in the Sorbonne with the ceiling two or three times higher than this and pictures of Racine and Molière and so on on the walls. And as I left, I'm sure I was feeling very proud of myself, and I got into the car with Pan Tadas, who was driving me around Paris, and Pan Tadas had something on his phone and I was irritated by it. I thought, okay, I worry when people are watching television

on their phones when they drive me. I'm going to ask Pantaras what's going on. I said, so Pantaras cheats to telebatchen yestrotsa? And he said, no. And then he explained. And Pantaras is part of a group in Paris who helps to look after Ukrainian soldiers who have been wounded in action and who are in Paris recuperating and at the end of each day

a Greek Catholic Churchman holds a prayer session with the women and holds a prayer session with the women and pantadas who have spent their days looking after these wounded servicemen and women. And so they're praying. That's what he was watching. The women on the screen were praying, and the priest was praying, and they were praying the entire time. So I then took a step back, and I listened to them pray, and we drove along along and nothing bad happened. It was all fine But I was thinking to myself as I listened to that there are two kinds of truth here. There's the truth of the war There's the objective truth that men and women are wounded

There's all of that and then of course, there's a subjective truth the truth of these people being together Being together helping the soldiers, but also being together on that call. Pantaras used the phrase, dobra energia, which I liked, like good energy, that there is something that they created themselves which wasn't there either. And so as I was trying to think of the essential themes of Sviatoslav's remarks, I was drawn to this. I'm in a luxurious position here

because not being a man of the cloth nor a theologian, I can simply abuse my position and assume that I will be corrected. When the time. But I was thinking that perhaps an essential source of this war, of this conflict, Perhaps an essential source of this war, of this conflict, is the denial of both of those kinds of truths. The denial of the objective truths, but also the denial of the subjective truths.

The denial of facts, but also the denial that anything can be good. So when I think about the lies at the beginning of this war, whether they are the lies of 2014 or the lies of 2022, these lies, they have both a factual and an ethical character at the same time. Most of these lies, as His Beatitude says, have to do with denying the existence of Ukraine. And that of course has a, it's a factual claim, but it's also an ethical claim. It's a claim that denies different kinds of truths.

It denies specific things, but it also denies what it means for Ukrainians to exist together, for human beings to exist together. And it seems to me that that vacuum,, right, that abyss, that thing that sucks in the factual truths and the ethical truths is really at the heart of this war. And that the in so far as we resist this, and now I'm going to turn to some phrases in in his Beatitudes lecture, insofar as we resist this, we're resisting it also with a couple of kinds of truth. So I was thinking about the truth of the stranger.

His Beatitudes cited Leviticus, I believe, and the idea of giving refuge to the stranger. And there are two kinds of truths in the stranger, of course. There is the truth that he is a stranger unto you, right? There is the truth that you don't know him, but that he's human. And then there are all the particular things that you learn about that person, if you choose to give them refuge, if you choose to treat them as a neighbor.

There are the particulars, and then there's the general. There's the general that this is another human being like you, and then there are the particulars There's the general that this is another human being like you, and then there are the particulars that you learn about that human being. And I was thinking about this in terms of the encounter that I believe those of us who are not Ukrainian have had the good fortune to have had with Ukraine or with Ukrainians these last three years.

Because, of course, it's a terrible terrible war and there's nothing redeeming about it But those of us who have had contact with Ukraine and Ukrainians have had contact with both of these kinds of truths we've we've we've met a stranger and We've been and we've recognized the stranger, but we thought we've also had the privilege of learning so many specific things about Ukraine and of course the more you learn about Ukraine, the more central Ukraine seems to be to the past and to the present. And I was thinking also about the truth of the neighbor. So in the New Testament, of course, Jesus returns to verses in Leviticus and tells the parable of the good Samaritan and asks, who is thy

neighbor? And the truth of the neighbor also has two parts, because the neighbor is recognizing the stranger, and this is very important, but the neighbor is also taking a risk. You know, the Good Samaritan took a risk. If you stop and you help someone who's lying on a ditch, you are, in fact, taking some kind of a risk. You're recognizing the humanity of the person,

but you're also taking a risk. And it strikes me also that as Ukrainians, for many of us, have shifted from being strangers to being neighbors, they've helped us to recognize that there is really no truth without risk. That the things that come very easily are very seldom true. And the things that come with some difficulties sometimes are true. And so it's difficult for various reasons, I think, for people beyond Ukraine to recognize

some of the basic truths. I can only empathize as I listen to his beatitude work, because it is work to try to convey to us some of the things which ought to be obvious. It's difficult, I think, for people who are beyond Ukraine to recognize risk and courage when we're not sure that we would show that courage ourselves, when we're not sure that we would take that risk ourselves. And that is, of course, the difficult truth

which we have to face and sometimes choose not to. And when I think of the untruths spoken in my own country to which his attitude so diplomatically half-referred, I think that may lie at the heart of our difficulties, or at least the difficulties of some of my fellow Americans, that we have trouble recognizing, we have trouble accepting that other people might take risks that we wouldn't take. And from that cowardice, from that difficulty of recognizing the stranger, also comes an inability to recognize yourself.

And as you fail to recognize yourself, you find tempting the lies that others tell. And in this way, Americans find their way back into this circle of untruth begun by Mr. Putin at the beginning of this war. And so I'm going to do my little American penance at the end of this. I'm not going to try to apologize for all that has happened in the past few weeks, although as a human being that is an American, I feel ashamed by it. But I'd like to read a poem which by the Ukrainian poet Ostop Slavinsky, which was just translated by Amelia Glazer, which I think captures some of this.

The poem is called What War Is. I'm going to read it in English. What war is. I'm gonna read it in English. Maybe someday they'll decide to write a textbook. Only we won't be invited to contribute because others always know better what war is. Because others always know better.

Okay, but just one chapter. Give us one chapter. You won't find any supplemental material anyway. This will be a chapter on silence. Whoever hasn't been in war doesn't know what silence is. But to the contrary, they know that we don't know. The way fish don't know about the water that sustains them and the oil that kills them. The way a field mouse doesn't know about the dark that hides it from the hawk.

But it hides the hawk too. Let us write this chapter. I know you're afraid of blood, so we'll write it with water. The water the wounded man asked for when he could no longer swallow and just looked at it. Water that seeps through his shelled out roof. Water that can replace tears. Yes, we'll come to you with water. We'll leave no permanent marks

on your slogans and values that we've so flagrantly misused that you can't even show them to your children anymore. These will be our few pages, and only a few will know that they aren't empty. Thank you. You were listening to Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk at the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto, giving a talk entitled War, Peace and Truth. His talk was followed by historian Timothy Snyder. Special thanks to Greg Rupick at St. Michael's College in

the University of Toronto, and to Jason McGregor for his on-site technical help. Danielle DuVal is the technical producer for Ideas. Lisa Ayuso is our web producer. Nikola Lukcic is our senior producer. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayed.