President Trump said yesterday that he will try to get back some territory for Ukraine when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. He also stated that there would be “some swapping, changes in land” between Russia and Ukraine.

Whether the world could or should trust a “peace” to which Mr. Putin agrees on these terms is another matter, an issue I explored in my new website article, “Vladimir Putin and the problem of autocratic power.” But why would Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agree to such an arrangement?

In recent days, he stated repeatedly that he would not concede Ukrainian land to Russia. Mr. Zelensky said last Saturday that his country could not violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding that “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers.”

However, the Telegraph headlined yesterday that Ukraine is now “prepared to cede territory held by Russia” as part of a peace plan. It reported that Mr. Zelensky “told European leaders that they must reject any settlement proposed by Donald Trump in which Ukraine gives up further territory—but that Russia could be allowed to retain some of the land it has taken. This would mean freezing the frontline where it is and handing Russia de facto control of territory it occupies in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea.”

Russia currently occupies around 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory as defined by Kyiv’s internationally recognized 1991 borders. Conceding these regions would require a nationwide referendum in Ukraine.

Why would their nation make such a move now?

What is the history of Ukraine?

Ukraine is the largest country in Europe after Russia, with a land area about 87 percent the size of Texas and a population of more than forty-two million. Different areas of the region were invaded and occupied by numerous groups over the centuries, but they are all now part of Ukraine.

Most of Ukraine fell to Russian rule in the eighteenth century, then became a republic of the Soviet Union after World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Parts of western Ukraine were divided between Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. By the end of World War II, the borders were redrawn to include these western Ukrainian territories.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine voted for independence on December 1, 1991, with 92 percent of Ukrainians in support. After a mass protest movement in 2014 toppled the pro-Russian government, Russian troops occupied the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea. Russia later annexed the peninsula. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

By some estimates, the current war has displaced a third of Ukraine’s population, with as many as 1.6 million Ukrainians forcibly transferred to Russian territories by Russian forces. Ukraine has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties as a result of the war as well.

Why would the two sides trade land for peace now?

On the Ukrainian side:

• In Crimea, more than two-thirds of the population claims Russian as its native language.
• Nearly 30 percent of Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language; almost all are concentrated in the areas contested in the present war.
• Ethnic Russians are the largest nationality in some of these oblasts as well.
• The Ukrainian president has previously acknowledged that his armed forces lack the capabilities needed to reclaim land from Moscow.
• However, after any settlement, Kiev could still attempt diplomatic means to return the land to its control.

On the Russian side:

• Fortune reports that a “fiscal crunch” is about to hit Russia’s war machine. In June, the country’s economy minister warned that Russia was “on the brink” of a recession.
• Oil revenues are weakening while war spending continues to soar.
• Widening deficits may cause Russia to run out of financial reserves, forcing cuts to public expenditures. Such cuts could be highly unpopular with the Russian populace, threatening Mr. Putin’s standing with them.
• Over a thousand multinational businesses have exited from Russia.
• Inflation is skyrocketing, with basic food items becoming prohibitively expensive.

When zero-sum conflicts emerge

Obviously, no one knows what will transpire in Friday’s meeting, assuming it happens. But we do know that each side will do what it perceives to be best for its side. Henry Kissinger was right: nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

The problem comes in zero-sum scenarios by which one side must lose for the other side to win. With territorial disputes, this is often the case. Israel and the Palestinians both want Jerusalem for their capital. Taiwan claims independence from China, which claims the island as its own.

When zero-sum conflicts emerge, we discover another reason humanity needs the biblical worldview. Scripture consistently teaches that this world is not our home, that we are sojourners here and our “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). Accordingly, we can concede temporal means for eternal ends:

• We can “give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42), whatever the temporal cost of such compassion.
• We can forgive our enemies rather than seeking retribution or revenge (Matthew 5:43–48).
• We can give to the needy without recognition or temporal reward (Matthew 6:1–4).
• We can “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20) by serving those who cannot serve us (Matthew 25:31–40).

If nations and people did what was just rather than what serves their temporal interests, the short-term cost would accrue to transformational long-term benefits. What would become of war? Crime? Sexual immorality? Prejudice and discrimination?

“Jesus will have none of that”

Acting in this way requires dying to self and living for the good of others. Only one Person has perfectly done this. The good news is that the same Spirit who empowered Jesus stands ready to empower us. The more we are yielded to him, the more we manifest his unconditional and sacrificial love for those he loves—and he loves everyone (Galatians 5:22; 1 John 4:8).

The way to measure whether we are “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) is to see how we treat people we don’t have to treat well, those who cannot repay us or benefit us in a way commensurate with our service to them. Tim Keller observed:

We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need—regardless of race, class, and religion—is your neighbor. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.

How will you treat the next neighbor you meet today?

Quote for the day:

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” —legendary coach John Wooden

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• “Bite Club”: the fraternity you don’t want but need
• Meet the man who walked a high wire between the Twin Towers

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“The underlying cause of this trouble”

President Trump has announced that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska this Friday. In related news, Putin told the US he would halt his war with Ukraine in exchange for land in eastern Ukraine and global recognition of Russia’s claims to the territory. We also learned yesterday that the White House is considering inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Alaska as well.

How likely is it that Ukraine would make such a land exchange? Or that Putin would honor a peace achieved in this way?

These questions point to a larger question foundational to the war and its global consequences.

Would Putin stop here?

Putin claims four eastern Ukrainian regions—Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. According to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), if Ukraine does not concede these lands, Russia’s occupation of them through military means “is neither inevitable nor imminent, as Russian forces will face serious operational obstacles in what are likely to be multi-year endeavors.”

Even if Ukraine were to concede these regions on its border with Russia, would Putin stop there?

The ISW paper states that Putin has recently claimed that “all of Ukraine” is Russia’s. To this end, the analysis reports that he remains committed to “replacing the democratically elected Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian puppet government, reducing Ukraine’s military such that Ukraine cannot defend itself from future aggression,” and “destroying the Ukrainian state, identity, and culture and subjugating the Ukrainian people.”

According to Paul D’Anieri, a leading expert on Russia-Ukraine relations, “Much of the Russian elite, including Putin, rejected Ukraine’s independence from the very moment it happened back in 1991. That is the underlying cause of this trouble.”

Here’s the larger question: Why is Putin so antagonistic toward Ukraine?

“Geography is destiny”

The Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) reportedly observed, “Geography is destiny.” He could have been speaking of Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine is part of the vast European Plain. This region is flat, with no natural features to deter an invading force. Accordingly, in the last five hundred years, Russia has been invaded across its western border by the Poles (1605), the Swedes (1707), the French under Napoleon (1812), and the Germans in both world wars (1914, 1941).

To Putin, controlling this border is vital to his nation’s security.

And there is the issue of warm-water access. Many of Russia’s ports on the Arctic freeze for several months each year. Its largest port on the Pacific Ocean is enclosed by the Sea of Japan, which is dominated by the Japanese. This halts the flow of trade into and out of Russia and prevents the Russian fleet from operating as a global power. This is why Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and insists on controlling it.

In the eighteenth century, Peter the Great took control of Ukraine as well as most of what we know as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. This formed a huge protective ring around Moscow. The fall of the USSR in 1991 cost Russia territory, with its border ending at Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

As long as a pro-Russia or even neutral government was in power in Ukraine, Russia could be confident of its buffer zone with the European Plain. But when a more pro-Western government came into power in 2014, Putin responded by seizing and annexing the Crimean peninsula. On February 24, 2022, he invaded Ukraine itself.

Putin and Peter the Great

Vladimir Putin has long seen himself as being on a historic mission to rebuild the Russian Empire, a goal with which many of his people agree. As Princeton history professor Stephen Kotkin notes, “Many Russians view their country as a providential power, with a distinct civilization and a special mission in the world.”

Putin often compares himself to Peter the Great, who founded the Russian Empire in 1721. Putin’s hometown is St. Petersburg, a city named for Peter and built on land he conquered from Sweden. Putin says he shares the eighteenth-century tsar’s goal of creating a Russian empire as it existed prior to 1917. This would call into question all of the former Soviet states as well as a large part of Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire.

Going back to Ivan IV (also known as Ivan the Terrible) in 1547, Russia has typically been ruled by a “tsar” (derived from the Latin caesar, meaning “emperor”). In 1721, Peter adopted the title of emperor and proclaimed the Russian Empire, though he continued to be called the tsar as well. According to Oxford historian Andrei Zorin, the “tsar” has been “deeply rooted in the cultural mythology of Russia” for at least five hundred years.

To this end, Putin keeps statues of four of Imperial Russia’s most revered tsars in the corners of his Kremlin cabinet office. A towering bronze statue of Peter the Great looms over Putin’s ceremonial desk. Putin says of Peter, “He will live as long as his cause is alive.”

The most powerful person who ever lived

Tomorrow we’ll explore Ukraine’s view of its history and its likely response to Putin’s demands. For today, we’ll close with this reminder: the quest for personal power commodifies people in a cycle of violence and vengeance that narrates human history.

Peter the Great tortured and killed his own son for allegedly conspiring against him and enslaved 540,000 people to build St Petersburg, many of them Swedish prisoners of war; as many as one hundred thousand died during the project. The British Ministry of Defense likewise estimates that over one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began.

For Putin, these are merely means to the end of his personal power in his quest to restore Mother Russia. He treats the rest of his citizens with similar disregard. In my visits to St. Petersburg over the years, I marveled at the historic beauty of the city but grieved at the enormous number of homeless people, many of whom freeze to death during the brutal winters.

What Nietzsche called the “will to power” tempts all of us to be the tsar of our “empire” and exploit people as means to our ends. Here we find another reason we need what only Jesus can do in our fallen hearts.

Christ was the most powerful person who ever lived. He could calm stormy seas, heal diseased bodies, and even raise the dead back to life. And yet he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

When we make him our Lord by submitting to his Spirit, we similarly exhibit his sacrificial love (Galatians 5:22), a power that ends wars, heals marriages and families, and restores nations. But only then.

We can seek our own transactional power or submit to the transforming power of God’s Spirit, but we cannot do both.

Choose wisely today.

Quote for the day:

“Jesus will say, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant,’ not ‘Well said.’” —Sean Smith

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A reality that breaks God’s heart

With yesterday’s introduction of GPT-5—the latest and most powerful version of the popular ChatGPT—artificial intelligence is back in the news, with the focus largely on how its advancements will impact day-to-day life. But while that story is important, today I’d like to discuss a more subtle way that AI is likely to change our lives going forward. Let’s start with GoLaxy, a Chinese company that would probably prefer to stay out of the news but has found itself at the center of a growing international controversy.

As Brett J. Goldstein and Brett. V. Benson—two professors at Vanderbilt University who specialize in international and national security—recently documented, GoLaxy is “emerging as a leader in technologically advanced, state-aligned influence campaigns, which deploy humanlike bot networks and psychological profiling to target individuals.”

They go on to note that the company—which denies any official connection with the Chinese government despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary—has been used in recent years to promote China’s preferred candidates and positions across elections in both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

GoLaxy works by mining social media to build profiles “customized to a person’s values, beliefs, emotional tendencies and vulnerabilities.” They then feed that information through their AI personas to engage in conversations that feel sufficiently authentic and human enough to largely evade the protections companies put in place to limit or identify AI activity.

As Goldstein and Benson describe, “The result is a highly efficient propaganda engine that’s designed to be nearly indistinguishable from legitimate online interaction, delivered instantaneously at a scale never before achieved.”

Now it appears they are looking to expand their efforts into the United States, with data suggesting that they’ve already built profiles on at least 117 members of Congress and more than 2,000 other political and cultural leaders. And if their past actions are any indication of their future intent, odds are good that they won’t stop there.

Fortunately, the reviews are mixed on just how influential their efforts have been to date. They will likely improve with time, but for now, they seem to represent more of a potential threat than an imminent one. However, the same cannot be said for a growing trend in AI that resides much closer to home.

“The AI companion who cares”

On this week’s inaugural episode of Faith & Clarity—our recently relaunched Denison Forum Podcast—we discussed the rise of AI companions and their increasing pervasiveness throughout our culture. While ChatGPT and others are driving much of the innovation in Artificial Intelligence, these companion bots have carved out a growing niche among some of our society’s most vulnerable.

Companies like Character.ai, Replika, and others offer users the chance to engage with AI personas tailored to their whims while promising a judgment-free interaction. Replika, for example, markets its bots as “The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”

While there are a host of reasons why such promises should send a shiver down your spine, the fact is that these companies have identified a very real need in our culture, and the statistics prove that they are increasingly effective at meeting it.

As of December of last year, Character.ai users spent an average of 93 minutes a day chatting with bots, which is 18 minutes longer than the average user spent on TikTok—the gold standard for social media addiction. As AI improves, it’s easy to see a world where that number only grows larger.

But while users claim these conversations are “harmless fun and can be a lifeline for people coping with anxiety and isolation,” the truth is that they are often relied upon most heavily by those who are least equipped to use them well.

That’s a problem we cannot afford to ignore. But how should it be addressed?

A flaw in the system

The most tempting cure for the misuse of AI will be to try to curtail its use or control the degree to which those most vulnerable to its abuse can gain access. A good example of that solution at work is the Illinois law passed this week, which makes it illegal for AI chatbots to offer any therapeutic advice or communication. But while the idea has merit, I doubt it will do much to truly solve the issue.

You see, the problem is not the technology. It’s the people who use it.

As long as there are hurting people who would rather find affirmation in AI than real relationships with other humans, services like these will have a market. We can try to limit access or curtail what kinds of services they can offer, but the root cause will still remain.

Given that the yearning for an accountability-free community is as old as the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8), I doubt we’ll fix that particular flaw in the system anytime soon.

But if we can’t stop the desire for what AI offers and we can’t prevent companies from making it available, what can we do? The Gospels give us a good place to start.

A level of intimacy AI can’t touch

Jesus had a habit of meeting with people who were desperate for connection, rocked by insecurity, and yearning for acceptance. Whether it’s the woman at the well, the leper afraid to do more than shout from a distance, or Peter after he denied even knowing Jesus, many of the most memorable moments throughout Christ’s ministry were stories of him meeting broken people and making them whole once again.

Unfortunately, in this world, it seems like for every Peter, there’s a Judas: someone in desperate need of God’s grace but too trapped in his guilt and sin to seek it. And that is just as true when it comes to AI as it is for any other temptation we face.

At the end of the day, we can warn people of the dangers, point them toward healthier alternatives, and do our best to offer the kind of genuine community they need, but it’s still up to the individual to decide whether or not they will accept it. The same free will that leads some to salvation traps others in damnation.

That reality breaks God’s heart (2 Peter 3:9), and it should break ours as well. But it’s the truth.

At the same time, on this side of heaven, it will always be too soon to give up on a person who needs Jesus. Our job is to love those God brings across our path and make sure every facet of our lives points to the joy, peace, and contentment that can only be found in him.

But we can’t offer others what we don’t have ourselves.

So, take some time today to ask God to help you identify any areas in your life where you need his healing. Truly open your heart and soul to his Spirit, committing to make whatever changes he asks of you and surrender any aspects of your life that are not submitted to him. Then ask him to make you aware of anyone you meet today who needs the same healing as well.

While AI can mimic a host of human interactions, it will never approach the level of intimacy available through the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives.

How well will your life reflect that reality today?

Quote of the day:

“Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the Universe.” —C. S. Lewis

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