It's Monday,

Monday, September 26, 2022.

I'm Albert Moller and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events

from a Christian worldview.

You may have noticed that what happens far far away often simply won't stay far far away.

International headlines have a way of working their way into American urgencies and regardless of where you live in the world

the fact is that headlines from elsewhere in the world can land right on your urgencies as well

now in order to understand this, we're going to begin today in Ukraine,

where the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now well over seven months old.

And let's just remind ourselves that all this happened when Russian

president Vladimir Putin, who after all functions basically, if not as a dictator,

then at least as an autocrat. Vladimir Putin began several years ago to annex Ukrainian territory

and to threaten to do more of the same. Years ago it began with the Crimean

Peninsula. That's an incredibly valuable piece of territory throughout much of world history and it had been a part of the

USSR the union of Soviet Socialist republics with the breakup of the USSR Ukraine became an independent state and Ukraine included within

its territory and this goes back to the age of the USSR the Crimean Peninsula but

Russia wanted it and what Vladimir Putin wants well he may take by military force he did that a few

years ago with Ukrainian peninsula and now he tried it just a matter of the

last several months with a land invasion and air attacks and a coordinated military effort that was clearly intended to seize, if not all of Ukraine, then most of it and to destabilize whatever might remain of Ukraine

so that it was no longer a threat to Russian superiority, nor Russian identity.

But let's just note that Russia has faced several setbacks.

Even as the Russian army was considered to be incredibly powerful,

...