1) Russia is concerned about NATO expansion and sees it as a threat, given past assurances that NATO would not expand into Russia's sphere of influence. 2) Tensions are rising as Russia has built up forces near Ukraine's border, threatening invasion over Ukraine's moves towards NATO membership. 3) The conflict has potential to escalate into a major war between nuclear-armed powers, with leaders on both sides making threats of military action.

1. by Dr. Peter Hammond

3. On the Brink of War
Along with the growing crisis
over Red China’s threats
to invade Taiwan,

7. the world is facing the first real threat of a major war, since the Cold War
possibly even including nuclear weapons,
between nuclear-armed superpowers.

8. In early November of 2021, the world was shocked by
the sudden announcement of a massive Russian military build-up
along Ukraine’s eastern border.

9. While the American Biden administration is not at all interested
in protecting its own borders, it is apparently willing to go to war
to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

10. The long-simmering territorial dispute over the Donbas, a region in
eastern Ukraine that is culturally and linguistically Russian,
has became a potential theatre for a major war between East and West.

11. American and European leaders lined up in support of Ukraine
and its president, Volodomir Zhelensky,

12. even as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin drew a line in the sand.
Ukraine, Putin insisted, was historically part of Russia’s sphere of
influence and could not be permitted to join NATO.

13. The West, in turn, accused Russia of threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty
and vowed resolute action against Russia, including possible military
involvement, should Putin invade.

14. Threats and Counter Threats
President Biden threatened drastic consequences. American Senator
Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
threatened to “rain destruction on the Russian military” should Putin
launch an invasion of Ukraine, a campaign that might include nuclear
strikes, since “we don’t rule out first-use nuclear action.”

15. Dmitry Kiselyov, head of the Russian state-owned news organization
Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) told the BBC that Russia was
preparing to deploy more missiles, including its vaunted new hypersonic
missiles. “If Ukraine ever joins NATO or if NATO develops military
infrastructure there, we will hold a gun to America’s head.
We have the military capability,” Kiselyov told BBC.

16. “Russia has the best weapons in the world — hypersonic ones.
They’d reach America as fast as US or British weapons could reach
Moscow from Ukraine. It would be the Cuban missile crisis all over
again, but with a shorter flight time for the missiles.”

17. Kiselyov warned that America could be
“turned into radioactive ash”
if Russia’s conditions were not met.

18. Luhansk and Donetsk
The Donbas region has been part of Russia for centuries. It first rose to
international significance in the 19th century as a result of its enormous
coal resources. The largest city, Donetsk, was founded by a British
industrialist who made a fortune there mining coal.

19. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Donbas region was incorporated into
the Ukrainian portion of the Soviet Union.
However, its overwhelmingly Russian population and industrial might
have made the region a flashpoint of contention.

20. The local population is decidedly in favour of independence from the
corrupt, kleptocratic, and discriminatory Ukrainian government
and even of outright annexation
by “Mother Russia.”

21. In March 2014, after the revolutionary overthrow of the elected
Ukrainian government, a separatist war erupted in the region
along with Russia’s annexation of Crimea,
another Russian majority territory.

22. Amid bitter fighting, Russian separatists seized control of most of the
Donbas and proclaimed two independent republics, Luhansk and
Donetsk. Much of Ukraine is almost entirely ethnic Russian
— the Donbas, Crimea and the major Black Sea city of Odessa are
actually Russian populations.

23. Amid bitter fighting, Russian separatists seized control of most of the
Donbas and proclaimed two independent republics, Luhansk and
Donetsk. Much of Ukraine is almost entirely ethnic Russian
— the Donbas, Crimea and the major Black Sea city of Odessa are
actually Russian populations.

24. The Expansion of NATO
Russia has been increasingly alarmed at the advance of NATO into its
backyard, which has seen the amalgamation of many former Soviet
republics and Warsaw Pact allies.

25. Despite previous assurances by the West to Russian officials after the
breakup of the Soviet Union that NATO would make no inroads into the
Russian sphere of influence, the ensuing decades have seen the three
Baltic republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — as well as Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and many of
the previous regions of the former Yugoslavia all formally join NATO.

26. Moreover, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan
are all beneficiaries of Individual Partnership Action Plans, or formal
cooperative agreements with NATO, that might be upgraded to
Membership Action Plans in the future.

27. With the exception of China, Finland and the Russian Far East, Russia
now finds herself virtually encircled by NATO members or potential
members. And nearly all of these new European NATO members
have also joined the European Union.

28. Nationalism vs. Globalism
It is understandable that Russia is deeply suspicious of
Western motives. A post-Cold War policy of strategic encirclement has
left Russia increasingly isolated, except for ally Belarus.

29. NATO was founded for the stated purpose of countering Soviet
expansionism. But following the collapse of the communist menace of
the Soviet Union, NATO expanded instead of disbanding. NATO
redefined its mission to include the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

30. Just as NATO is the most powerful international military alliance ever
created, so too is the European Union the most effective attempt at
economic and political union in history.
The European Union, originally created out of the deceptively named
European Common Market, has become an attempt to set up a
centralised regional government.

31. The goal of such continental arrangements is to drastically reduce the
number of independent nations and provide for the integration of
regional Unions into a global government. Former U.S. National
Security Advisor and globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski declared in 1995,
“We cannot leap into world government in one quick step.... The
precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is
progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger,
more stable, more cooperative units.”

32. Regional military alliances, especially NATO, are promoted as a means
of internationalizing military force, to prepare for the eventual
consolidation of regional military alliances into a global military as an
indispensable ingredient of a consolidated global government.

33. Resisting the New World Order
Russia remains nationalistic and resistant to assimilation into existing
international systems. Russia is very reluctant to enter into any type of
binding agreement or treaty with other countries or under any
international authority.

34. The ultimate objective of the internationalists is the establishment of a
single world government. Most of their actions are guided by their
objective of creating political, military and economic conditions
favourable to the establishment of such a New World Order.

35. All of the major innovations in foreign policy since World War II
— the establishment of the United Nations, the WHO, World Trade
Organization, the IMF and the World Bank, the establishment of the
European Union

36. and the formation of permanent international military alliances,
especially NATO — have had as their purpose replacing independent
nations with world government.

38. A Warning from the New American
Charles Scaliger (TNA February 14, 2022):
“While the partisans of world government have always preferred
a peaceful, incremental approach, …

39. …there can be no doubt that a nuclear war between the West and Russia
would furnish the ultimate pretext for fast-tracking world government
— a pretext they would certainly not hesitate to exploit
should such a war occur.

40. A nuclear World War III would be an unprecedented calamity not only
for the lives of millions of people, the fabric of modern civilization, and
the rest of life on Earth, but also for future generations who would likely
face permanent bondage under a world government in which an
independent America was only a distant memory.

41. American leaders have no sound moral or strategic interest in the broils
of eastern Europe, and it is deadly folly to risk nuclear war
— and its abyssal aftermath —
by meddling in quarrels whose moral contours are unclear and whose
outcome ought to be none of our business.

42. The meddling needs to stop. Americans should insist, therefore, that their
elected representatives in Congress get the United States out of NATO
and the United Nations and adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy”
Charles Scaliger (TNA February 14, 2022)

43. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves
are slaves of corruption…” 2 Peter 2:19

44. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, declared: "If we do not know our own
history, we will simply have to endure all the same mistakes,
sacrifices and absurdities all over again."

45. Many of my East European friends think that the American
government is extremely hypocritical,.

46. considering that they betrayed over 100 million Christians in Eastern
European countries, to Stalin's Soviet Union
through the Yalta Agreement in 1945.

47. Ukraine was freed by
Germany in 1917 and
this independence was
recognised by Vladimir
Lenin's Soviet Union in
the Brest-Litovsk Treaty
of March 1918.

48. However, the Allies at the Versailles Treaty betrayed the Ukraine back
into the hands of the Soviet Union.

49. Many millions of Ukrainians were slaughtered under first, Lenin's
and then Stalin's brutal purges

50. The Kulaks were farmers. Dekulakisation was presented as “land
reform.”

51. The official state newspaper “Pravda” declared: “In order to
eliminate the Kulaks as a class, the resistance of this class must
be smashed in open battle

52. and it must be deprived of the productive sources of its existence
and development (free use of land, instruments of production, land
renting, right to hire labour, etc.)

53. that is the term towards the policy of eliminating the Kulaks as a
class.”

55. Under this Dekulakisation policy, 18 million peasants lost their
homes and farms, millions were deported to Siberia
Dekulakisation – Land Reform in Ukraine

57. and up to 11 million Ukrainians died in the massacres and
resultant man-made starvation between 1929 and 1936.

58. This came to be called the Holodomor. Also known as the Great
Famine and the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932 to 1933.

59. The word Holodomor literally translated from Ukrainian means:
“death by hunger”, “to kill by hunger”, or “to starve to death.”

60. Holodomor is a compound of the Ukrainian words
holod, meaning hunger and mor, meaning plague.
The Holodomor

62. The 2017 film Bitter Harvest dramatizes the horrors of the Soviet
Holodomor in Ukraine.

63. Ukraine was again liberated by Germany in WWII,
but then betrayed by Allies through the Yalta Agreement back
into the blood-stained hands of Stalin's Soviet Union.

64. As our friends in Eastern Europe point out to us, without the
extravagant support of the United States, United Kingdom and Canada,
Stalin's Soviet Union could not have even survived Operation
Barbarossa in 1941.

65. Even before America entered WWII officially, vast quantities of
military hardware were being flown, shipped and trucked into Russia
via Alaska, Persia and Murmansk.

66. At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941, Germany faced
a Soviet Army of 5, 774,000. The Soviet Union had 316 divisions,
117,600 artillery pieces, 25,700 tanks and 18,700 combat air craft.
The Largest Conflict In History

67. The German Wehrmacht at this
time had 5,200 tanks of which
3,350 were committed
to the Eastern front.
This gave the Soviets more than
7 to 1 advantage in armour.

68. The Luftwaffe had just over 4,000 aircraft to oppose the 18,700 aircraft
in the Soviet Air Force.

69. Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation
ever launched to that date.
Operation Barbarossa

70. It was fought over a 2,900 km front
and involved 600,000 motor vehicles
and 750,000 horses for the German
and European volunteers of this
operation to liberate Russia
from communism and
end the Soviet threat to Europe.

71. In the first day, one quarter of the
Soviet Union's Air Force was destroyed.
Unprecedented

72. The German Blitzkrieg tactics devastated the Red Army and
made stupendous progress.

75. By October over 3 million Red Army soldiers
had been taken as Prisoners of War.

77. What no one had
anticipated was the
vast amount of aid
which the United
States of America
would give to the
Soviet Union.
American
Industry
Bolstered the
Soviet Union

78. Even before America entered WWII officially, vast quantities of military
hardware began being flown, shipped and trucked into Russia via Alaska,
Persia and Murmansk.

79. On 24 June 1941, Six months before the Pearl Harbour attack,
President Roosevelt held a press conference
in which he announced that America would give
all possible help to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

80. That idea was at first not well received within the USA.
An opinion poll conducted in July, for example,
found 54 percent of the respondents were
opposed to aiding the USSR.
Roosevelt persisted, however
and vast quantities of aid continued to flow….

81. There were three main routes by which military aid to Russia /USSR was
delivered. The Arctic convoys to Murmansk and Archangel were by far
the most dangerous, but more than 50 percent of the supplies went by
ship via the Pacific. American cargo ships flying the flag of the Soviet
Union steamed to Vladivostok and unloaded supplies to be transported
along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Soviet assembly plants in the Urals

82. or directly to the front line. Despite German protests, Tokyo allowed the
shipments to the Soviets to continue unhampered throughout the war.

83. In 1941 the Allies also opened a corridor through Iran into Russia. That
route was made possible by the completion in 1939 of the Trans-Iranian
Railroad, which linked the Persian Gulf with points all over Iran including
the Russian border

84. the British and Soviets engaged in a joint operation to overthrow Shah
Reza Pahlavi and seized control of Iran & it’s strategic railroad.

86. Thereafter Allied convoys from the US would sail around the Cape of
Good Hope and unload their cargoes at ports in both Iraq and Iran. That
route was responsible for deliveries of approximately 25 percent of the
total supplies sent to Russia.

87. Also part of the Pacific passage was the Alaska-Siberian aircraft route
(known by the acronym ALSIB), which was used primarily for the direct
transfer of aircraft to Russia.

88. An official list of military hardware supplied by the USA
to the USSR from 1941, includes:
Gifts To Stalin

89. 13,713 Tanks
& Armoured Vehicles;

90. 14,795 military aircraft;

91. 77,972 Jeeps;

92. 375,883 trucks;

93. 35,170 motorcycles;

94. 8,071 tractors; 15,631 artillery pieces;
131,633 heavy machine guns;

95. 1,981 locomotives; 90 cargo ships;

96. 4,478,000 tonnes of food supplies;

97. $1,078,965,000 of machines and equipment;

98. 2,670,000 tonnes of petroleum products;
49,860 tonnes of leather; 3,786,000 tyres;

99. 15,417,000 pairs of army boots; 106,893,000 tonnes of
cotton; building equipment valued at $10,000,910,000;

100. non-iron metals
802,000 tonnes;

101. along with 29 tankers; 433 combat ships,

102. the US provided over 2 million tons of
petroleum products.

103. as well as mobile bridges, railroad equipment,
aircraft radio equipment and many other items.

104. US also delivered about 470,000 tons of explosives,

105. 1.4 billion rounds of small arms ammunition,
and 21 million rounds of ammunition of 37mm and larger
sizes. The raw explosives delivered were enough for the
Soviets to load more than 60 million artillery shells.

106. The US sent about 270,000 tons of rolled steel,
enough to manufacture about 15,000 T-34 Tanks

107. All of the US effort resulted in an immense quantity
of war materials delivered to the Soviet Union.
The American aid can be broken down into three categories:
weapons, support items and raw materials.

108. In terms of major weapon systems, the US delivered
11,400 aircraft, 7,165 tanks, 5,500 40mm antiaircraft guns,
1,000 quad-mounted 50 caliber anti-aircraft guns,
2,500 81mm mortars
and 137,000 .45 caliber submachineguns.

109. The American provision of 1,981 locomotives,
some 11,000 freight cars
and 3,600 miles of railway track
helped the USSR expand its rail capacity

110. American factories also sent
106 million yards
of cotton cloth,
62 million yards
of woolen cloth,
and over 15 million
pairs of boots.
225,000 cans
of shoe polish,
50,000 hair clippers
and 257 million buttons

111. This does not include the very generous aid
given by Great Britain to the Soviet Union.
British and Canadian Aid
to the USSR

112. Great Britain sent the USSR:
5,218 tanks
5,511 Bofors anti-aircraft guns,

113. 5,042 tanks and 12 minesweepers.

114. Britain supplied 5,800 aircraft,

115. along with approximately 3,300 Hurricane
and 1,000 Spitfire fighter aircraft.

116. The British sent over 1.7 billion dollars worth
of supplies to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

117. Canada supplied
the Soviet Union
with 2,788 Tanks &
Armoured Vehicles

118. Canada also supplied Stalin over a million artillery shells
and 208,000 tonnes of wheat and flour.

119. There is no doubt that without the Western aid the Soviet Union
wouldn’t have been able to survive a year.

120. Russian historian Boris Sokolov wrote in 1998:
“Lend Lease was the decisive factor
in the Soviet ability to continue the war.”

121. The British also formed a unit that fought directly for the
Soviets in 1941. The first British deliveries included the
personnel and all 40 Hurricanes of 151 Wing of the RAF.

122. From 11 September through 18 October,1941
those British pilots flew missions over Murmansk.

123. After training Soviets to fly their planes, the RAF personnel
returned to England where their commander was awarded
the Order of Lenin by the Soviet ambassador.

124. The colossal American military aid shipped to Stalin's Soviet Union was
neither morally defensible, nor wise.

125. Capitalist America effectively salvaged the Communist dictatorship in
Russia from collapse and helped fund, fuel and arm

126. the greatest military threat to Western civilization:
the Soviet Union.

127. "…Should you
help the wicked
and love those
who hate
the Lord?
Therefore
the wrath
of the Lord
is upon you.”
2 Chronicles 19:2

128. The Ukrainian and Lithuanian Armies continued to fight for their
freedom and independence for 10 years after the conclusion of WWII.

129. Units of the Ukrainian Army were still operating, with field artillery,
fighting valiantly against Soviet oppression, as late as 1955.
Yet without receiving any support from the Allies.

130. Freedom Betrayed documents the treacherous role played by the United
States in fomenting the Second World War, escalating it, bailing out and
supporting the worst mass-murdering dictatorship in the world, Stalin's
Soviet Union,
Treacherous Betrayal of Liberty

131. and betraying 15 nations of
Eastern and Central Europe,
with over 100 million Christians
in them, to the hideous
oppression of communist Russia
and its NKVD Secret Police.

132. Under Operation Keelhaul
over 2 million Russians
and a million Ukrainians
in Western Europe
were forcibly repatriated
By British and American troops
into the hands of the Soviet NKVD,
most massacred out of hand and the
rest consigned to slave labour in the
GULAG in Siberia.

133. By partnering with Stalin to defeat Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill
gave communism legitimacy and provided the essential support
that prevented the Soviet Union from collapsing
as Operation Barbarossa was launched.
Supporting Communism

134. Worse, by acceding to the Soviet dictator's territorial demands, they
betrayed the very principles of universal self-determination they had
proclaimed in The Atlantic Charter.
Treachery

135. By November 1943, secret commitments by the Allies
at their Tehran Conference constituted
"the greatest blows to human freedom in this century."
Catastrophic Betrayals

136. However, no aid was supplied to the Ukrainian Freedom fighters,
or the Lithuanian forces, who were battling the most brutal
dictatorship in the history of the world.

137. The Black Book of Communism provides further documentation of
this systematic extermination of the farmers in Ukraine, which was
once called “the bread basket of Europe.”

138. So our friends in the Ukraine are extremely cynical about what NATO,
the EU and the US are involved in now, interfering in this
Ukrainian - Russian conflict.

139. Russian friends point out that there is no way that President Vladimir
Putin can allow Russia's vital ice-free port in the Crimea to fall out of
the control of the Russian Federation.

140. As Murmansk is up in the Arctic Circle and under ice much of the year
and Vladivostok is often frozen up with ice,
the Russian Navy's main ice-free ports are in the Crimea.

141. To compare what is at stake,
one should consider what
Americans would think if
California (with the strategic
San Diego Naval Base)
or Virginia (with Norfolk)
strategic naval bases were to
secede and be affiliated with
Russia. How acceptable
would that be?

142. Patrick Buchanan has dealt with
the consequences of short-sighted
policies and double-standards in
his books:
A Republic - Not An Empire;
and Churchill, Hitler and the
Unnecessary War - How
Britain Lost Her Empire and
The West Lost the World.

143. Russia today produces more
oil than any other country on
earth. With the price of oil,
that translates to massive
earnings.
Russia is now the second
largest oil exporter in the
world,
whereas the United States
is the largest oil importer
on earth,
followed by China.

144. Russia today produces more natural gas than any other country. Russia
supplies 34% of Europe's natural gas requirements.

145. While the United States debt is greater than its
Gross Domestic Product, (over 100%),
Russia's debt is only 8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

146. While the United States has a trade deficit of more than $500 billion
a year, Russia consistently runs a large trade surplus.

147. While the United States unemployment is officially 7.4%,
Russia's unemployment is 5.4%.

148. Since Vladimir Putin became president of Russia, the Russian GDP has
doubled. Today Russia is rated as the 6th largest economy in the world.

149. Industry in Russia has grown over 75% in the last 18 years.
Investments have increased by 125%.
The average salary in Russia has increased over 800%.

150. The middle class has grown from 8 million to 55 million
and people living below the poverty line have decreased
from 30% in the year 2000, to 14% by 2008.

151. Russia has also added over 570 metric tonnes of gold to their Reserves
over the last decade. It is pretty serious when the Russians are
warning the American's about the dangers of socialism.

152. Christians in Russia have expressed their shock at how America has
become a new evil empire.

153. Promoting abortion and privileges for perverts, with an aggressive
pro-homosexual agenda, bullying Africa governments to legalise
abortion and homosexuality,
and sending generous aid to radical middle-Eastern governments,
which severely persecute the Christian Church.

154. Xavier Lerma of Pravda in Moscow, wrote:
"Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and rightly so. The
Soviet Union was the Russian people held hostage by the Communists.

155. Putin and Reagan listened to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Those who listen to their elders tend to be wiser.

156. Vladimir Putin allows Christianity to flourish, unlike the liberals in
America, who have their own warped idea of freedom from God and a
denial of evil's existence in the world.

157. "There is a reason why most public schools in America do not teach
the Bolshevik Revolution and its true consequences.

158. There are people in the West that want to remove everything related
to Christ from public view, just as the Communists did
during the Soviet enslavement of Russia.

159. 21st century Russia is proof that Christianity can prevail against
darkness and confusion. Today the liberals who control the West fear
Putin as though doomsday was tomorrow. It is not a nuclear threat,
but rather a spiritual renewal that threatens them.

160. It is not Putin, but Russia's Christianity they fear. Rather it is Christ they
truly fear and hate. They tried to persuade Americans by scaring
everyone with ideas of Putin as the evil KGB out to destroy the world…

161. They demonized Putin because it is not our world,
but their liberal world that is in danger of being destroyed.

162. "How can conservative media sources in America,
who claim to be Christian, ignore their Christian brothers in Russia,
who are now successful?

163. Martyrs they ignore and the blood that was shed to restore the
Christian Church in Russia. They are con-artists playing the
conservative side as fools while the liberals enslave the rest.

164. Devout Russian Christians are on the march… not like the Communist
Soviet Union, who spread wars like Obama and the US are doing now.

165. These Russians are like disciples of Christ, who lovingly reach out to
their brothers and sisters, helping men and women in darkness,
enslaved by a materialistic society, who are truly in need of Christ."

166. Xavier Lerma writes that the reason Western media are demonizing
President Vladimir Putin and Russia, is because they have passed laws
strengthening the penalties for "propagating homosexuality amongst
minors, and for insulting peoples' religious convictions in public."

167. The so-called Gay Propaganda Bill introduces fines for propaganda
of non-traditional sexual relations to minors,
including on the media, on the internet and via viral adverts.

168. Under this new law, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transvestite (LGBT)
rallies are prohibited, as is the distribution aimed at forming
non-traditional sexual morality in children.

169. Fines and imprisonment are prescribed for the propagation of
homosexuality in Russia. The All Russia Public Opinion Centre showed
that 88% of Russians support this amendment to the law.

170. It is an incredible irony that religious freedom is under assault
by the US Democratic Party and government while the
Russian government is printing Bibles to place in hotel rooms!

171. It is an incredible reversal of fortunes that the countries
behind what used to be the Iron Curtain, now have
some of the most dynamic Christian Churches
and the highest percentage of Church attendance in Europe.

172. It would appear that Western decadence, immorality, materialism,
compromise and superficiality in Churches and shallow, sensational
entertainment, have been more deadly to the Church than virulent
atheist propaganda and vicious communist persecution in the East.

173. Today there are more Evangelical, born-again Christians in Russia than
in any other country in Europe. The Ukraine has the second largest
group of Evangelical Christians in Europe, followed by Romania.

174. When Russians enjoy more religious freedom in public
than Americans, then something is seriously wrong.
When Russians expressed their concern about
lack of freedom and spiritual discernment in America,
we should be very concerned.

175. "He has shown you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justly, to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God?“
Micah 6:8

176. "Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the Word of the Lord may run
swiftly and be glorified, just as it is with you, and that we may be
delivered from unreasonable and wicked men; for not all have faith."
2 Thessalonians 3:1-2