Knox Thames

Knox Thames served in a special envoy role for religious minorities at the U.S. Department of State during the Obama and Trump administrations. He is writing a book on ending 21st-century persecution. Follow him on Twitter @KnoxThames.

FILE - In this Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018 file photo, an aerial photo of the thousand-year-old Monastery of Caves, also known as Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the holiest site of Eastern Orthodox Christians is taken through morning fog during sunrise in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine's president has promised the country's Orthodox Christian faithful they will be free to remain part of the Russian Orthodox Church after the creation of an independent Ukrainian church. Amid deteriorating ties with Moscow, Kiev has been pushing for the creation of an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church that would be free of control from the Moscow Patriarchate. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

Opinion

March 6, 2022

Defending religion in Ukraine – Russia's Putin distorts shared Christian roots to justify war

Both Ukraine and Russia are ancient bastions of Christianity. And this Christian history is part of President Vladimir Putin’s twisted logic to justify the unjustifiable aggression.