Despite so much bad news, Russians and Americans still love working together [Video]

It might seem that with American political rancor against Russia at quite a high level, that the Russian Federation and the United States are absolutely not in cooperation with one another. However, there are several interesting developments that show that quite the opposite is true – Where possible, Russians and Americans are not only cooperating, but deepening their collaboration with one another on significant projects in many fields.

Let’s start with something far out. Really far out. Like… space.

Earlier this year, former Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin published a videoclip showing the ISS’s Russian side breaking apart from the Western modules of the International Space Station:

NASA Watch on Twitter: “Russian gov’t-controlled RIA Novosti @rianru posted a video on Telegram made by @Roscosmos where cosmonauts say goodbye to Mark Vande Hei on #ISS, depart, and then the Russian segment detaches from the rest of ISS. @Rogozin is clearly threatening the ISS program. #NASA #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/fj2coK1xR1 / Twitter”

Russian gov’t-controlled RIA Novosti @rianru posted a video on Telegram made by @Roscosmos where cosmonauts say goodbye to Mark Vande Hei on #ISS, depart, and then the Russian segment detaches from the rest of ISS. @Rogozin is clearly threatening the ISS program. #NASA #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/fj2coK1xR1

This happened March 6th of this year, and there was a followup on April 3rd when Mr. Rogozin repeated his rhetorical bluster and honest frustration with the blitzkrieg of sanctions launched against Russia by the collective West as a whole, but he also included responses:

For example, Rogozin shared what he said was a March 30 letter from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“The U.S. continues to support international government space cooperation, especially those activities associated with operating the ISS with Russia, Canada, Europe, and Japan,” Nelson’s letter states, in part. “New and existing U.S. export control measures continue to allow cooperation between the U.S. and Russia to ensure continued safe operations of the ISS.”

As a follower of the American space program, I have not been the biggest fan of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, but here he deserves real credit for defusing the bluster. But it didn’t stop here. US and Russian shared flights paused for a bit, but then quietly resumed with a rideshare Soyuz launch from Baikonur on September 21st.

This happened after Mr. Rogozin stepped down from Roscosmos and was replaced by President Putin’s appointee, former Deputy Prme Minister Yury Borisov. Sergey Krikalev, the executive director of Roscosmos’s human spaceflight programs, was clear about the reason for his appointment:

During a call with reporters Monday evening, Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who serves as the executive director of Roscosmos’s human spaceflight programs, reiterated that Russia would continue its partnership on the space station through 2024, a date to which it had previously committed itself.

While Russia is working to design and build a new space station, he said, “we know that is not going to happen very quick,” so the country could “discuss extending our partnership in ISS.”

During a news conference after the launch Wednesday, Krikalev said the launch marked a “new phase” of a relationship that began when the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated in space with the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

“We started to cooperate many years ago, more than 40 years ago, and we will continue our cooperation as long as I can imagine,” Krikalev said.

Asked if the more conciliatory tone was a concerted effort to ease tensions, he said, “The answer is yes.”

See for yourself.

This was part of a new rideshare deal reached between NASA and Roscosmos which had three flights from each agency in which a rocket from one agency carried a citizen astronaut or cosmonaut from the other. The first American flight under this agreement carrying a Russian cosmonaut launched last week:

The 11 crew members now living aboard the International Space Station had a short day on Friday following Thursday’s arrival of the SpaceX Crew-5 mission. The eight astronauts and three cosmonauts had a long night following the docking of the SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew ship.

The four Crew-5 members are now officially Expedition 68 flight engineers and will spend the next few days getting used to life on orbit and familiarizing themselves with space station systems. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, along with Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, have a long list of space experiments they will conduct during their stay on the orbital lab. The commercial crew quartet will study microgravity’s affects on the cardiorespiratory system, modeling heart tissue to improve therapies for spaceflight-caused health issues, and the 3D bioprinting of human organs and tissues for implantation, among multiple other types of research.

These stories are certainly less flashy than reading or watching accounts of one side’s military forces blowing the pogies out of the other, and this also seems to say something about the absurdity of why people get in fights. When it comes to things like science, we get along just fine.

But it doesn’t stop there. Another area where the two countries work together is in the fine arts, an area in which I have personal involvement. Several interesting events have taken place or are in development, even as the proxy war conducted and orchestrated by Western elites continues.

One might think that with all the professed anti-Russian sentiment in the West that Russian people traveling Stateside would run into problems, especially when dealing with those with strong pro-Ukrainian sentiments.

However, reality was quite different:

This was the group shot of a choral masterclass. Yours truly is on the far right, but more importantly, the man in the center in black is Maestro Vladimir Gorbik of Moscow, and this photo was taken in Madeira Beach, Florida, at the Chapel of St Mary Magdalen (sic). The priest is Father Cassian Newton, an Antiochian Orthodox priest. The masterclass had all Americans with all kinds of views as to the conflict in Ukraine, ranging from total Russian patriot to very supportive of Ukraine.

But it didn’t matter, and one of the highlights for me was watching people with radically different views work together, as friends and even as brothers. Indeed, the most stunning progress in the class came from those whose political points of view could not have differed more.

From a review written about this masterclass:

Vladimir Gorbik is a true devotee of Russian sacred music. Despite the difficult realities of the present time, he has not succumbed to those difficulties, and he is constantly expanding the scope of his educational musical projects on both sides of the ocean. Thus, at the end of the summer of 2022, Vladimir crossed the Atlantic and once again set foot on the American continent, visiting the states of Florida and California, where he met with many people and church parishioners.

Vladimir Gorbik: “In our difficult times, the thought suddenly occurred to me that only the Lord himself can save the situation. The lack of mutual understanding between peoples now more than ever needs special support, albeit in the language of music. Remembering the words of Christ that “where two or three are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of them”, I decided to directly address my Orthodox colleagues in America: regents, singers, conductors, and to pray with them for peace on the whole planet . Thank God, my close friends: Alena Plavsic from Kansas, General Director of our company Music of the Continents, The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia Fund for Assistance, Vladimir Morosan from San Diego, President of the music publishing company Musica Russica, choir director Seraphim Hanisch, my student conductor and co-founder of our Capital Symphony Orchestra in Moscow and New York, all helped me make this fantastic two-week trip. When I flew to the second master class at the farthest point from Moscow – San Diego, the time difference was 10 hours. And after such grueling flights, two master classes – in St. Petersburg (Florida) at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen and in San Diego (California) at the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr – were held with incredible success.

“The Church of St. Mary Magdalen of the Antiochian Orthodox Church is located on a barrier island along Florida’s Gulf Coast, in a part of the city with the amazing name of St. Petersburg! This impressed me no less than visiting the cells of desert monks on Athos many years ago. Father Cassian, the rector of this temple, is truly an Antiochian elder. He is the confessor for Seraphim Hanisch. Fr. Cassian became a great spiritual authority for me during the master class. The temple is small, the parish consisting of a very small number of people deeply abiding in the Spirit of God. I felt the atmosphere of true Christian love among all the co-workers and parishioners of this church. The student choir directors listened attentively and followed all the recommendations, taking turns directing the choir at services with me. The result of their work was very pleasing. As a result, a joint decision was made to create a choir there on a professional basis. Father Cassian blessed our undertaking…

This is a further example of the reality of relations between Russians and Westerners, particularly Americans that happens when people focus on what truly matters. Everyone on this project was united in a common center, that being Orthodox Christianity, and in this framework, politics took their proper place as “of all but zero importance”, far from the woke rage that fuels the conflict raging across Europe.

The final example for this piece is also something I must admit I know because I am involved in it, but that makes it no less real. In late 2021, a project was undertaken to record a setting of the central Orthodox Christian church service, the astoundingly beautiful Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.

There are many, many recordings of the Divine Liturgy, as this subject has been the topic of a great many composers from Russia, Ukraine and other Orthodox Christian lands. The Liturgy is a common theme for the most excellent among American and Western choral ensembles, particularly with regards to the use of the various Russian choral traditions. However, most of the composers are themselves Russian or Ukrainian or otherwise “old country.”

This setting is different. It is an American work, composed in English by an American composer who belongs to the Orthodox Church. Kurt Sander, a professor at Northern Kentucky University, is the composer. His Liturgy received a Grammy nomination in 2020.

Now, however, the Liturgy has been recorded again, this time in the Church Slavonic language, that which is used in services throughout most Slavic Orthodox Christian lands, such as Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Russia. It was recorded in Moscow with a premier Russian ensemble, and produced by an American (me.)

The US Embassy has even gotten in on the act, helping to promote the Liturgy in an upcoming concert series to be held in major Russian cities.

So, one can see that for many of us, there is no fight. While the principles that are at the center of the conflict in Ukraine are of extreme importance, and while a view of the pretexts for each side’s justification in the conflict reveal that it is Russia that is fighting for the right to set her own course as an increasingly Christian-guided nation, the further facts evidence this – that where Christianity is at the center of everything, there is peace and unity.

The fact that this unity exists, and that the spirit of cooperation still is very strong between Russia and many in the West, points to the fact that true Christianity unites. “Nationalist” Christianity divides, and while the Western media likes to poke at Russia’s Church leadership as being “Putin stoogery”, the opposite is true. All it takes to see this is to read President Putin’s own speech given the day the special military operation started, and the lack of similar emphasis in President Zelensky’s own speech given the same day.

This is a war of Christianity versus the woke godlessness of elitist nihilism. Yes, that is a very rhetorical statement. But it is also true. We just looked at several examples that show how true it is. I would further opine (yes, here it comes, an opinion!) that the woke crowd is not real. There are many people that adhere to wokeism, that is true. But what I mean is that these people are committed to an ideology that is purely delusional, denying every single one of the following statements of reality:

Men cannot be women. Women cannot be men. Mind-altering drug use DOES alter and damage the mind, and it kills logical, reasonable thinking. Orthodox Christianity, truly practiced, brings the world together, Christians and nonbelievers alike. Love is not sex. Love is placing someone else’s needs ahead of one’s own wants.

And God’s love always, always wins.