In the pre-dawn hours of Christmas morning 2016, a sudden disaster pierced deeply into the heart of the Bear. A beloved symbol of national pride, renowned the world over as ambassadors of high Russian culture, met a heart-wrenching end in the waters just off Sochi. Sixty-four members of the celebrated Alexandrov Ensemble, including five leading soloists, perished in the Black Sea as the military Tu-154 carrying them to a planned New Year’s concert in Syria went down in a suspicious crash right after take-off.
The scope of this tragic loss may escape the cult followers of what passes for culture in the mass-marketed west, and certainly the western media has paid scant attention, but the loss to both the Russian state and its people terminally overshadowed Christmas celebrations, turning it into an official national day of mourning. Across the nation outdoor Christmas festivities were cancelled, holiday TV programming was shelved and the hearts of Russians everywhere were turned from Christmas cheer to very personal shock, grief and disbelief. Men of honour, known and loved by all, were taken from both their immediate families and their national family in a cruel irony as they set out on a mission of joy and peace. Along with them, all crew members, a doctor and numerous journalists were also lost.
While the true nature of this incident has not yet come to public light, all thinking people should reflect on the relentless succession of provocations that the Eagle has been meting out to the Bear as it rides the White Horse of regime change and its war on terror in the name of its deathbed democracy. From fomenting rebellion in Georgia, manipulating world oil markets to cripple the Russian economy, destabilizing Ukraine and leveraging that carnage into even larger scale anti-Russian sanctions, sponsoring terror and treachery in Syria to spearheading the ostracism of Russian Olympic athletes and suspicious assassinations of Russian diplomats, there is no front on which the Bear has not suffered covert acts of aggression. The arrogance has ratcheted up recently as the clear will of the American people is rejected by the drunkards of Ephraim [Isa 28:1-3] and blamed on Russia with statements like, “We’re sending a message. We have the capacity to do it.” “Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you.” “We need to take action. And we will — at the time and place of our choosing.” “He’ll [Putin] know it. It will be at the time of our choosing — and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.” Will the public know it? “Hope not.”, was the response in mid Oct.
In 1991 the former Soviet Union dissolved as Russia suffered the humiliating loss of the cubs of its former satellite states when it formally lost the cold war on Dec 25, the last day the USSR’s flag flew. Since then the Eagle has been gathering them into its nest while advancing on the Bear itself. The current Russian leadership has not forgotten those cubs, but even if the sting of those losses has been softened by a new openness and a transition from an atheist state to one now embracing its former Christian values, one that should be a natural ally of the west, this fresh, painfully intimate loss, 25 years later to the day, surely rips open those wounds and adds new, bitter ones. These new cubs are lost not only by the state but by every Russian who loved and honoured these men and their proud heritage of excellence that transcended the Soviet era, for 90 years shining as ambassadors of a Russian spirit that withstood and overcame many great evils. This wound has pierced to the heart of the nation and it will it not be soon healed. At an all-too-near point, with cunning wisdom and the savage rage of a bear bereft of her cubs, the cruel provocations will be answered, as it is written:
Hos 13:8 I will meet them like a bear deprived of her cubs;
I will tear open their rib cage, and there I will devour them like a lion.
America's Destiny Unsealed 