Merry Christmas!

Remember Ukraine!
Stand with Ukraine!

This is funny & uncanny at the same time. Russia unveiling a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, one of the worst murderers of Christians from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution - to the tune of “Jesus Christ, superstar!”

#StandWithUkraine

Remember that night when Iran attacked Israel and when NATO jets were collectively shooting the drones and missiles down? It’s every night in Ukraine.

Only more drones.
And no NATO jets.

#StandWithUkraine

Volodymyr Mykolayenko, former mayor of Kherson who refused to be exchanged in favour of other 🇺🇦 PoW and who was released only now, 3 years later, tells his story. How he was beaten “almost daily, except on Easter”.

And that’s all you need to know about Russia’s “Christianity”.

The more you shake Putin’s hand, the more trigger-happy it gets.

Finally these two found where they belong.

Dictator putin and his clique judging Ukraine’s government legitimacy is like bats opining on a sunrise. Stick to what you know, night dwellers!

11 years ago, 🇺🇦 Olena Kulish & Volodymyr Alyokhin got executed mafia-style in #Donbas. “Guilty” of supplying 🇺🇦 soldiers with food.

He was in IT. She was a popular radio host & animal rights activist. Russians killed her 6 dogs too. Just for the fun of it.

#RussianWarCrimes

You give me huge chunk of your territory, including major cities. And I will graciously stop killing you. Maybe. For now.

Sincerely,

Russian Federation
Permanent member of the UN Security Council

Thank you! So glad you are ok. Missed you on Twitter.

My sincere gratitude to President @ZelenskyyUA for appointing me Ukraine’s new ambassador to South Africa. It’s an honour & challenge in so many ways.

Diplomacy is my life-long passion & the world’s best job which I gladly embrace again.

#StandWithUkraine

This a-cappella rendition of a popular Ukrainian love song became an instant hit.

In all my years on this earth I haven’t seen 🇺🇦 culture as vibrant as it is now.

#StandWithUkraine

It seemed like a good idea - very Christian and (musically) very Austrian. Yet Russian “Christians” smugly refused. They didn’t want to hear anything Ukrainian.

I think of this story every time someone says “Russia got provoked”.

#StandWithUkraine

🇷🇺 delegation was headed by Bishop Ilarion Alfeyev, their chief diplomat, a known theologian, and a hobby composer. During the visit the Catholic Church had an idea: why not surprise the guest with rendition of one of his musical pieces performed by the choir of 🇺🇦 Greek Catholic Church in Vienna.
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An illustration to put russian smugness in perspective. Somewhere around 2018, during my time as 🇺🇦ambassador in Austria, I was informed of contacts between Catholic Church & 🇷🇺 Orthodoxy. Catholics were doing the Christian thing: reaching out a friendly hand, trying to smooth out existing problems.
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Without too many words.

🇷🇺: You kill PoWs, don’t you?

🇺🇦: We ain’t you.

#StandWithUkraine

Watching them, I wonder if each one charges into the assault thinking they’ll be the one to survive and get rich. But then our guys hit them, and the stats report: another five down, dead.”

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him!) gave an interesting take on human stupidity & greed: “The Day of Judgment won’t come until the Euphrates parts, revealing a mountain of gold. People will fight over it, & out of every hundred, 99 will die. Yet each will think: Maybe I’ll be the one to survive!

They come to take and devour our resources, to populate our land with themselves. While the swarm’s leaders try to explain why they attack & kill us, the lower ranks just want to enrich themselves by murdering & looting.

Their authorities gave them permission, so it’s fine. Without hesitation, they’d wear your dress and eat from your plate because their czar and church blessed it.

You came to kill our children to raise yours? Silence. Eyes down. But that’s the reality. They’d calmly kill us and our children, take our homes, sleep in our beds, even wear our clothes. They don’t see it as repulsive or wrong.

When I spoke to 🇷🇺 PoWs, they all said they wanted money from Putin’s regime to improve their financial situation. Not one mentioned ideological motives, belief in higher values, or a lofty goal. Just loans, debts, mortgages, poverty, the need to raise kids.

For what? What’s the motivation? What do they hope to gain?

My philosophical and theological training pushes my mind to make sense of why this conditional Homo erectus (because I can’t organically call them Homo sapiens, seeing no rationality in their actions) climbs over the corpses of their swarm to certain death, amid ruins resembling a Martian landscape.

My philosophical education stops me from seeing this routine through a mathematician’s eyes, simply noting: minus one, minus five, minus forty.

But with some insane persistence. The individual dissolves, becoming part of the swarm, where the death of a few doesn’t even register. I can’t explain why they keep coming, even knowing we’ll kill them.

This differs from Soviet Marshal Zhukov’s meat grinder assaults only in that they now attack in smaller groups, not to capture kilometers, but to take a single position of a few square meters. Day after day, methodically—wave after wave, if lose ground, they fall back, if anyone’s left to fall back.

This society is a swarm of locusts. Their purpose is to push forward no matter what, seizing new territories. Every day, they advance in small groups of 3-5, climbing over the corpses of those who, hours earlier, stormed the same position. No sense, no reason, no success, just piling bodies.

A stunning account on how #RussianArmy fights this war - from Saïd Ismagilov, Ukraine’s supreme mufti who has been fighting for Ukraine for the last three years.

Thread 🧵

Russians started what was supposed their Ukraine blitzkrieg by bombing Kyiv and other 🇺🇦 cities at 4am - just like the Nazis in 1941.

They got stopped 19 miles away from Kyiv - just like the Nazis 19 miles from Moscow.

History does rhyme.

#StandWithUkraine