Putin, Jesus’ Death, & Zelenskyy

Charles Brammall

Last weekend, I heard a mature Christian chap say, “Maybe we should pray that someone assassinates Putin, Netanyahu, Kim Sung Un, Trump, the Hamas leader, the Saudi Arabian and Iranian guys, Xi Jinping, and the corrupt, despotic, African leaders.” Thoughts?

The balloon he flew came from believing-pastor Bonhoeffer’s plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, believing that the Führer’s actions were a grave evil. While Bonhoeffer was a pacifist, he still concluded that Hitler’s regime posed such a threat to Germany and humanity that taking action, even violent action, would honour God and was justified in stopping it. 

Is that a good and Godly way to think? Should we take up his prayer mantle and that kind of prayer? Even corporately, perhaps? What do you think?

(Suggestion- put this story down now and share musings with a Christian sibling you’re with.)

What did the two of you resolve?

My Slovenian best mate, Leon, was a Church Missionary Society missionary in that stunning, sophisticated, and most European of Eastern European lands. It is just a hop, skip and a jump from battered, bereaved Ukraine. Leon invited my young family and me to join his long-term university student ministry in Slovenia.

… Becoming fluent in their onorous (for us) lingo, buying property, and persevering in that Gospelly-hardened land for as long as the sovereign Lord allowed us. But in His omniscience and love, the All-wise One resoundingly closed that door.

Instead, we ended up being cross-(sub)cultural missionaries of another sort, for almost as long —to our own city’s then-booming entertainment industry, with “ENTER,” The Entertainment Bible Ministry.

Leon and his wife were missionaries in the former nation for 20 arduous, testing, but Gospel-fruitful years. They regretfully repatriated, and he became the first full-time paid Chaplain to Canberra’s Parliamentary Christian Fellowship in Parliament House. It is a groundbreaking Word ministry to pollsters, staffers, bureaucrats, and political journalists. Please pray for fruit there. 

A long-yearned-for but as yet unfulfilled dream of mine is to backpack around Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine: hitching, and straddling a gorgeous and highly rideable Sol Invictus ARES 650cc 50’s style Cafe Racer. She is an invigorating, beastly behemoth of a motor. Think Steve McQueen’s bike in “The Great Escape”.

Especially, I hope to explore Ukraine-hostelling, surfing on my friends’ settees, and “exploring” (as my young kids used to say) non-beaten tracks. “Dangerous?” you say. Yes. My dear wife won’t join me😉. It may have to wait until her eventual demise, many years from now. But Bill Bryson, eat your heart out.

Another passionate dream is to hop across the ditch from NW Japan to Vladivostok. Because?

A) It’s a real (though isolated from uptown) part of Russia, which I’ve always wanted to take in,

B) It’s safe, unlike Western Russia and, to a degree, Moscow and St Petersburg at the moment, and

C) It’s exponentially cheaper, faster and less burdensome to travel to. 

But what do Putin, Zelenskyy, and Jesus’ death have in common?

Arguably, they form a tragic tapestry of Geopolitics, Scripture, History and Philosophy. And it is particularly crucial that we believers be historically conscious and nuanced. One might entitle Jesus’, Putin’s, and Zelenskyy’s commonalities “Power, Peace, and the Pierced Hands”.

Our news feeds tend to read like ghost-writes by Thucydides: statesmen jousting for power, borders pressed like bruises, and rhetoric as polished as it is poisonous. Vladimir and Volodymyr, the two Vs, are just the latest players in a centuries-long drama of power, land, and narrative. But into such a theatre, the death of Jesus is an interruption so strange; it still startles the politically literate.

When Pilate met Jesus, he asked that cynical statesman’s question: “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38). He was Rome’s provincial manager— not unlike modern leaders. Except his press conferences were held on stone steps, and he didn’t have to endure live Twitter fact-checks. But like the former, he believed he was in control. In reality, as Augustine later noted, the Big P was “but an unwitting instrument of a greater sovereignty.”

Putin might understand Pilate’s posture: you control the army, the courts, the messaging. And yet history has an unnerving habit of casting its main characters not as conquerors, but as cautionary tales.  Even think Christian “Triumphalism”.

The same could be said for the Ukrainian leadership, which is scrambling to defend its sovereignty in the shadow of a greater power. Both sides (but one more than the other) are in danger of becoming Macbeth, haunted by the bloody business that “returns to plague the inventor.”

But Jesus’ death tells a counter-story to all this. It’s a plot in which the rightful King wins not by breaking His enemies, but by being broken for them: “For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). In geopolitical terms, it’s absurd. In heavenly terms, it’s the only lasting strategy.

Tolstoy, himself Russian, wrote in War and Peace: “The strongest of all warriors are these two— Time and Patience.” Yet Christ offers an even stranger arsenal: grace and self-sacrifice. If that ethic governed Moscow and Kyiv alike, ceasefires would not just be negotiated; they would be incarnated.

Because history shows us that empires – from Rome to USSR, and from Mother Britain to the US – eventually dissolve, the day will come when we will take guided tours around the ruins of the White House, like we do now around the Palatine. Because crucifixion continues to stand as the hinge of history.

Churchill can thunder, Lincoln can heal, but only Jesus can rescue – and did so, by laying down every part of His rightful, logical claim to earthly power.

For any leader – whether in the Kremlin or the Verkhovna Rada, the Pentagon or Buckingham Palace – the cross still asks the same unnerving question: Will you define victory as the world does, or as Christ did? T.S. Eliot put it thus in Murder in the Cathedral, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

Because in the end, those pierced side, feet, brow and hands hold more authority than any modern nuclear arsenal. And that’s not sentimental piety. It’s history.

But if I’m an Australian Christian thinking about the invasion, and now war, I’m in a vexed, arguably insoluble, Devil’s Triangle. It is a morally fraught, geopolitically complex, and emotionally charged quandary. However, the good Word provides us with categories to think with that cut through propaganda, nationalism, and tribalism.

Firstly, I need to commence with a Bible-form moral compass. I want to avoid arriving at “sides,” but rather kick off with the ethical framework Scripture gives for nations and war. Which is:

God is sovereignly in control over nations– “He makes nations great, and he destroys them” (Job 12:23). Russia, Ukraine, NATO, Australia—none are beyond His control.

2. War is a symptom of sin, James 4:1–2 says that war comes from sinful desires— pride, greed, and revenge – not from some mystical inevitability.

3. The state’s role is justice, not domination– Rom 13 frames government as God’s servant to punish evil and protect the innocent. Aggressive, unprovoked invasion is a violation of that role.

4. Christians are citizens 1st of heaven– Phil 3:20 reminds me that I am not to wholesale absorb the propaganda of “our side,” whether from Canberra, Washington, Moscow, or Kyiv.

Secondly, I need to recognise moral clarity without naïveté. From God’s perspective in His just Bible, Russia’s 2022 invasion is morally wrong. It fits the pattern of aggressive war condemned in Scripture (e.g Hab 2:12 – “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with injustice!”)

Putin and his lieutenants have caused massive civilian suffering, violated sovereignty, and sewn terror in neighbouring nations. Just by mid Sep ‘24, 1,000,000 Ukrainians and Russians had been killed. Heaven (literally) knows how many have beenkillednow.

And Ukraine is not morally spotless; corruption and nationalism are real there, too. NATO and the West have made strategic moves over decades that Russia perceives as encirclement— but perception doesn’t justify invasion. So moral clarity must never mean swallowing a simplistic “good guys/bad guys” LA script.

Thirdly, I can apply a Bible loving, believing and obeying conscience. Lord of Hosts (arguably “armies” in Scripture) calls me not to geopolitical punditry, but to live out, and in, Jesus’ Lordhood, in the political sphere.

So I can pray for peace and justice. Who knows how many wars the Loving Father has held back the hand of in answer to you and my prayers?! We will never know. So it’s  obviously worth doing. Not because of “the power of prayer”, but because of the goodness and power of the One to Whom we pray. 

And Timothy commands me in 2:1–2: “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.”

I also have the privilege, joy and means to support relief and protection for the vulnerable– Prov 24:11 “rescue those being led away to death.” That might mean giving to aid groups working with refugees, or advocating for humanitarian corridors.

I can also never cheer for military escalation, but rue and mourn it. Even “just war” has catastrophic fallout; Prov 20:18- “Finalise plans with counsel, and wage war with sound guidance.” As a believer, it’s good to be wary of becoming emotionally intoxicated with weaponry or “team spirit.”

4thly, I can guard against the two big believers’ temptations:

The “crusader reflex”, ie aligning Christian mission with military or national goals (“Putin is Gog/Magog, let’s get the tanks rolling”). This risks baptising political violence without sober theological critique.

2. The “ostrich reflex”, ie retreating into personal piety and ignoring the suffering of millions because “this world will burn anyway.” The loving Parent calls for both holiness and active neighbour-love. In fact, they’re one and the same. To suggest otherwise is a straw man.

Fifty, I can think about Oz’s role through the lens of the Word. Australia is part of the Western alliance (ANZUS, AUKUS, and UN sanctions). Our government is providing military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

So, as a Christian, I can ask things like: “Does this aid serve justice and protect the innocent?” “Are we counting the human and economic cost honestly?” “Are we also working toward long-term reconciliation, not just a military win?” Rom 12:18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

So, my ultimate filtering frame? The death of Jesus. The war exposes humanity’s desperate need for the gospel, peace, and judgment. God’s love and His justice. His mercy & His retribution. Both Putin and Zelenskyy, Russian service people and Ukrainian soldiers, and civilians on both sides, stand equally guilty before God and equally in need of Christ.

Genuine, honest peace between nations- transparent, perspicacious peace- will only ultimately come with the 2nd Advent of the Prince of Peace. Til then, every effort at justice is partial, provisional, and in need of redemption.

In the meantime, my witness is to be the “smell of Christ” (2 Cor 2:15) among those who smell of smoke and blood.

Prayers:

Our gracious God and loving Heavenly Father,

Please help me to think specifically about Russia and Ukraine, from Biblical principles, and then to actions I can take as an Aussie Christian.

For Jesus’ victorious Name’s sake,

Amen

Dear Heavenly Father,

Please help me to do the above so that I can think through the issues quickly in conversation, without losing nuance —especially if someone tries to force me into either a “pro-Ukraine” or “pro-Putin” corner.

In the almighty Name of the Lord of hosts,Amen.

Image: Destruction in Kyiv. Image Credit: Віталій Носач / РБК-Україна