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Good morning. This week Russia held its annual Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repressions, when people think especially of the millions of victims of Soviet terror. There is a particular poignancy about it this year as many of them will also be thinking of their relatives now at risk, after being called up to fight in Ukraine. During that Soviet period I visited Russia on a number of occasions and extraordinary times they were. One of my personal responses really took me by surprise. I am not a person given to tears, but on Russian soil during that period I often found myself holding them back. It was I think a sense of the suffering of the Russian people over such a long time and on such a scale. In the 13th century the Mongols totally devastated the country, burning its major cities including Moscow. Then for centuries under the Tsars the vast majority of the people were serfs, hardly better than slaves. Under Stalin conditions became even worse with some 20 million perishing through famine, forced labour, the camps and executions. Finally during World War II the Soviet Union lost 27 million people, for whom flares burn day and night on their war memorials. But alas it was not, for once again ordinary people are becoming victims of a murderous regime. Once again the haunting sound of deep Russian bases singing the Kontakion of the departed are being heard. Every day the Christian Church prays the Lord’s prayer with its lines ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. When I relate that to the situation in Ukraine I pray first for the soldiers fighting for a just peace and the civilians longing for an end to the bombing. But I remember also the Russian soldiers, also victims in their way, going to fight …badly trained and badly equipped for a cause they have mixed feelings about. Casualties in war are notoriously difficult to estimate, The Russians admit to 6,000 soldiers killed but a more likely figure is 15, 000. Whatever the exact number the tragic fact is that once again so many ordinary Russians are suffering not just the soldiers but their bereaved families. So another phrase also comes into my mind, from the Song of Mary, the Magnificat. ‘Scatter the proud in the imagination of the hearts’, I want the delusions and self-deceptions, lies and half-truths of Russian propaganda to be shattered and scattered. Before the Divine kingdom is established in events, it has to be established in the mind, in the human imagination.