Date: 04/03/2022
LETTER TO PRESIDENT VLADIMYR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA.
March 4, 2022
Your Excellency,
I write this letter to you with extreme respect as I love Russia and her people. I was born in Punjab, India. Now I am a citizen of the United Kingdom, though I still have intense love for the country where I was born.
In 1947 Punjab was engulfed in civil war and we saw great loss of innocent lives and destruction of properties. My mother became a widow at young age and I became an orphan.
The deep scars of that bloody episode in the Indian history and the long years of hard struggle by my grieving mother for our survival, have continuously agonized my mind till today. I can, therefore, relate to the small children of the Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine who have become orphans to grieve and miss their fathers throughout their lives. The same goes for the innocent Ukrainian children who are losing their fathers in this internecine war.
Sir, you will know how horrible is the mere thought of someone hurting your own two children, Maria and Katerina! Those small children in Ukraine are no different from your own two daughters.
The Russians and the Ukrainians are the same race and religion. They have common history. Their blood mixed in battlefields during World War 2 when they were fighting their common enemy. Ukrainians and the Russians can never be regarded separate people or enemies! That will be a real tragedy that should not be allowed to happen.
Sir, the world regards this war as “family feud” and Russia is the elder brother who gave up the courage to go for reconciliation, disregarded the common history, common blood, common religion and the same race but “took to sword”, ironically, in the most advanced, enlightened and civilized continent on the earth!
Russia has most famous thinkers, writers and men & women of wisdom and tolerance. And Russia is the world's super power. From my perspective the war against Ukraine seems like a big boy beating the small boy at school. That unfair match never gets applause or approval when we think of Russia as the country that has the wisest and the most intelligent and compassionate rulers who themselves went through the worst horrors of war in my living memory.
That wounded and bleeding generation of Russians in 1940’s used to say, “We know the horrors of war and will never inflict one on anyone else!” Yet the ancestors’ call seems to have been totally forgotten!
During World War 2 the Russians suffered horrendous losses and I felt great sorrow for the young children and babies who lost their loving parents and became orphans like me. That grief and bitterness has “consumed” my generation that still has bitter memories of that civil war.
I recall those dark days when Russia and Ukraine both fought fiercely like brothers against NAZI Germany. Both nations were one united people. The bond of love and trust between Russia and Ukraine was meant to be strong, unbreakable and eternal.
We humans are on this earth for a very short time. Already the generation of 1940’s is only a memory now. Soon we too shall also be gone, handing over the world to our children. But what kind of a world? Of bitterness or amity, hate or love, aggressive or Christian?
I believe that this war is senseless. Killing fellow Christians and subjecting the families with small children to pain, hunger and extreme terror, injuries, mutilations and death cannot be acceptable to all the compassionate Russians. It is totally senseless to kill indiscriminately, drive millions out of their homes and destroy those beautiful historic buildings that can never be built again in that glorious shape and manner. It amounts to permanent loss of precious human heritage.
Russia and Ukraine are both Christian countries. Please think how it looks to the rest of the world, the tragedy of Christians killing Christians. Soul of the Russian Orthodox Church must be in anguish.
This war is an unnecessary conflict and misery where the "husband is Ukrainian and the wife a Russian", or vice versa! One wonders as to why the two nations cannot live amicably together!
Moscow needs to grasp that for the Ukrainians Russia is next door and they can simply walk into it if they wish whereas America is on the other side of the globe and her people have a different culture, language, even mentality. For the Ukrainians that’s another family and they know where “blood is thicker than water”! So why would the Ukrainians wish to join NATO? And what has driven them to this way of thinking?
I believe their “elder brother has done something to scare them!”
I, therefore appeal to you, as the elder brother, to act in the interest of the family and do some of the following things to unite the two counties and restore mutual trust and love.
Declare peace and withdraw the Russian army immediately from the soil of Ukraine.
Win the trust of the Ukrainian people. Declare visa free travel between Russia and Ukraine.
Let the people in both countries travel freely in both countries in order to live and work freely, or to enjoy holidays.
Russia is requested to re-build all the buildings destroyed by bombs, rockets and missiles in Ukraine during the last 10 days and thus win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine should become a bi-lingual country where the Russian and Ukrainian languages enjoy equal status. That will remove the ground for feud.
Merge the separatist districts of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. Also return Crimea to Ukraine granting local autonomy like Quebec in the English speaking Canada.
Please reassure the Slavic people of Ukraine that they also belong to the same Slavic Christian family as the Russians. Please put Christ in your heart. This will guarantee peace, in contrast to war.
Posterity will remember you in gratitude and thank you for bringing peace, friendship and prosperity instead of memories of death and destruction.
Sir, this is your challenge to show to the people of Ukraine that in the case of need the Russians will arrive first before France, Germany and the United States of America.
Please also see the example of the British Commonwealth, and consider this: “Why do all the former colonies of the United Kingdom wish to belong to the British Commonwealth even after independence?”
Russia could also attract all the former Republics in the Soviet Union in the same way to make the Great Russian Commonwealth and get all of them, not only Ukraine, under her own Sphere of Influence! All that is required is genuine love, generosity, wisdom and statesmanship. What you give will come back as double in order to benefit the people of Russia and make Russia greater still!
Small countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO out of fear of Russia. Your challenge is to create so much confidence in them that they exit NATO voluntarily just as Britain has done in the European Union! It is a test that Russia ought to pass. Russia can be like the benign caring parents to the small countries to her West and South.
Finally, I submit that Russia can prevail upon the Ukrainians by the most powerful “weapon” called "LOVE". There is no need to wage a war merely to “punish” or kill fellow Christians who happen to be your own Slav family and immediate neighbours!
I hope that you will kindly consider these points dispassionately with open mind and offer the benefits & bounties of unity, peace and prosperity to the people of Russia and Ukraine alike.
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