The news arrives with the grim familiarity of a recurring nightmare: Russian missiles tear through Kyiv, killing 11 and setting the historic St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral ablaze. The images are stark: flames licking the golden domes, smoke rising above a city that has already endured so much. And yet, as I watch the footage, I cannot help but think not of the immediate horror but of the broader historical context. We are witnessing not merely a military assault but a deliberate cultural genocide. The Russians understand what the West has forgotten: that a nation's soul resides in its cathedrals, its libraries, its monuments. To destroy them is to erase the past and, with it, any claim to a distinct future.
But let us not pretend this is an isolated act of savagery. It is the logical endpoint of a worldview that sees history as an inconvenience, a set of obstacles to be bulldozed in the name of some utopian vision. The Kremlin, in its clumsy imitation of Soviet and Tsarist autocracy, has always hated the idea of an independent Ukraine, a nation that dared to be different, to look Westward, to embrace a civilisation that Moscow considers degenerate. And so, they attack not just soldiers but symbols. They bomb cathedrals, they shell museums, they kidnap children. This is what empires do when they feel their grip slipping: they lash out with everything they have, hoping to burn away any memory of resistance.
And what of the West? The response is, as always, a study in intellectual decadence. We issue statements. We impose sanctions that are full of loopholes. We debate whether to send this or that weapon system. We wring our hands and talk about 'de-escalation' as if the aggressor were a rational actor. Meanwhile, Ukraine burns. The truth is that we have lost the will to confront evil directly. We prefer the comfort of abstractions, the safety of moral equivalence, the smugness of 'both sides' arguments. We have forgotten that some causes are just and some are not. We have forgotten that civilisation requires a spine.
The cathedral in Kyiv is not just a building. It is a link to the Kyivan Rus, to the baptism of Volodymyr the Great, to a thousand years of faith and culture. When its domes collapse, so does a part of our shared European heritage. And yet, how many Western intellectuals will shed a tear? They are too busy deconstructing the very idea of heritage, of nationhood, of any identity that is not fluid and negotiable. They have made a fetish of rootlessness and now they wonder why they cannot summon the energy to defend what is precious.
I am told that we must be careful not to 'other' the Russians, that we must understand their grievances. Nonsense. This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a clash of civilisations. This is a simple conflict between those who respect human life and those who do not, between those who honour history and those who would burn it to the ground. The time for nuance has passed. What we need now is clarity of purpose. We need to arm Ukraine with everything it needs to win. We need to isolate Russia completely. We need to break the intellectual habit of seeing every conflict as grey when some are, in fact, black and white.
As the smoke clears over St. Michael's, let us take a moment to imagine a world without such cathedrals, without the memory of what they stood for. That is the world our adversaries want. That is the future we must resist with every fibre of our being. The question is whether we have the moral courage to do so.
