From Maia Mikhaluk in Kyiv (564th day): 1am Sunday. Kyiv is under drone attack. Explosions in several regions of Kyiv. (Ukraine was attacked by 33 drones)
On Sat evening as Ukrainians were putting kids to bed, getting ready for a night sleep, some ruzzians kissed their own kids goodnight and came for a night shift of work – work of killing people in another country. It’s not a hard work – just push a button and somewhere hundreds of kilometers away people will be waking up to air raid sirens, carrying their sleepy kids to bomb shelters or ignore the warning of sirens and risk being killed in their sleep.
What do ruzzians feel pushing the buttons to launch drones that target Ukrainian families peacefully sleeping in their homes? Are they enjoying the power to end lives? Or are they telling themselves that they just follow orders, it’s not their responsibility?
Whether they enjoy it, justify it, distance themselves from responsibility, ignore it, or even silently disagree with aggression against another country, the collective responsibility on all of them. They push buttons to launch missiles, they send their men to conquer our land and kill our people, they pay taxes to support the war, they elect their leaders…
Voice of Ukraine 
2 responses to “9/11/2023 – Ukrainians were putting kids to bed, getting ready for a night sleep, some ruzzians kissed their own kids goodnight and came for a night shift of work – work of killing people in another country…”
From Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 564):
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.
Psalm 114:7-8
Last night, we were at grandma’s. We came to visit her in the village over the weekend. I was working on my laptop late into the night. I saw the alert going off in several regions of Ukraine as kamikaze drones started approaching the border. Then, the air raid warning was announced for the Kyiv region. I was thankful we were in the village as it’s a relatively safe location.
In a few minutes, I heard a kamikaze drone going over our house and an airplane following it nearby. I froze for a moment and prayed for the drone to be destroyed and for the safety of all people who could be affected. In a few minutes, several shock waves went over our house, one after another. No explosions were heard, but it felt like a gust of power went through the house. It was scary, yet I was thankful for this answer to my previous prayer.
As I reflected on this night’s experience, a few thoughts crossed my mind. First, we may be tempted to feel like we have a safe place, but there is no such thing on this side of eternity. Secondly, we may feel relieved that we are away from some big trouble, but the Lord may choose to shake us to remind us that everything is in His sovereign power. And thirdly, while some things might seem scary (like feeling the shock wave), they may be necessary to bring deliverance to many people around you.
And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. […] And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Matthew 24:6-8, 12-13
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J.R.R.Tolkien to his son, April 30 1944
My dearest:
I have decided to send you another air letter, not an airgraph, in the hope that I may so cheer you up a little more. … I do miss you so, and I find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours. The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.
I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives
… But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do. And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away ‘salvation’. In which case God would arrange matters differently! …
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