Dear Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin, President of the Russian Federation,
I WRITE TO YOU today in a manner that perhaps I was destined to do all my life:
You see, one of my earliest memories was when the Soviet Union invaded my parents' country, Czechoslovakia on my mother's birthday. I was 4 years old at the time. These kind of memories, her face, stay with one all one's life.
I'm also named after an uncle of mine on my father's side who, the first one in his family to make it to the University, was arrested and imprisoned for being part of a student group which passed around, at that time, the 1950s, literature that the Communist authorities had considered subversive.
Finally, on my mother's side, my grandfather (deduska) was Russian, actually and fascinatingly here 1/2 Russian and 1/2 Ukrainian. His mother was Russian, his father Ukrainian. My deduska was born and grew up in Mineralnye Vody "na Kafkazu" (in the Caucuses)
He too as a young person had to run for his life during the time of the Russian Civil War, actually himself running from the Whites because he wrote into the local newspaper of the time a complaint asking why the White Guards had hung two of his best friends in the town square. He was told by another friend that he had to leave town immediately or else he'd be hung next to them.
That was the last time he saw his parents and family, who died in the famines that killed so many Ukrainians and one of the main reasons why the Ukrainians so want to be independent from Russia even today.
So I understand the youth of your country, the youth my country, when we get upset at strong men doing terrible things to people who honestly don't deserve to suffer or die.
BUT I ALSO WRITE as one who understands your central complaint against the West. I too know _well_ the Western prejudice against Russians (and Slavs in general, but I'm going to write here specifically of Russians) who despite a 1000+ year history and a culture, religion, arts and music that can hold their own against any other and yet are ignorantly and arrogantly dismissed by people who don't even know what they themselves lost from their own cultural pasts. I completely understand your complaint against the West.
And yes, I even celebrate the achievements of the Russian space program, who with ingenuity, improvisation, optimism and will, were able to achieve matters that the often perfectionist, petty and egotistical West was unable to do.
HOWEVER, FINALLY I WRITE TO YOU as a religious man: I grew up in a family where all three major branches of Christianity were present -- Catholicism, Protestantism and through my mother Orthodoxy.
I am a Catholic priest for reasons too complex to explain here, but I do know a fair amount about Orthodoxy both much of the good and some that could, with humility, of course, be improved.
I know for instance that the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow will NEVER tell you what to do. In the Orthodox conception, you are in power because God wills it.
But why God wills that you be in power, is then for your humble discernment, and though the Orthodox Church would NEVER tell you why, the reasons _may not be_ for the ones that you may think you are in power.
For instance, if you stopped this War in the Ukraine, if you humbly admitted that despite your best intentions for the sake of Mother Russia and the Right Faith, you made a mistake, THE ORTHODOX CHURCH WOULD PRAISE YOU TO THE HIGHEST HEAVEN AS THE GREATEST (RUSSIAN) LEADER WHO EVER LIVED.
Take a moment to reflect on this and YOU'D KNOW THAT THIS WOULD BE TRUE.
You would become a Saint. Churches 500 years from now would be built in your honor.
You would become known as St. Vladimir the Penitent, the Humble, the Good.
500-1000 years from now, your name would be praised as a leader who despite having all the power in the world at your disposal (and all the temptations that come with it) that you realized that you had made a mistake, that despite your intentions you were hurting the innocent.
With the Patriarch of Moscow, smiling and praising you at your side, HE would forgive you, YOUR PEOPLE would forgive you.
Even the Ukrainians, relieved that they'd be allowed to live, would honestly grudgingly forgive you, and a case would be made in their history for the next 500-1000 years that:
"You know what, the Russians weren't all that bad. This St. Vladimir COULD HAVE CRUSHED US, and after seeing how things were going, HE REPENTED OF IT and let us live. What an amazing leader he turned out to be."
This is possible Vladimir Vladimirovich.
And in as much as possible, I, along with certainly many others, would be willing to do anything, to make it possible for you.
Think of the people that you could let live. Think of the example that you could give to leaders ALL OVER THE WORLD for the next 500, 1000, 5000 years from now.
You could become truly Great by becoming above all Good.
And the WHOLE ORTHODOX CHURCH would bless you for it.
Slava Russye, Slava Ukrainye, and above all Slava Bogu.
