Bridges and Walls in a time of war

Literature

“…Something there is that doesn’t like a wall, / That wants it down…” — From Mending Wall, by Robert Frost (1914)

“…Our whole life is a transition, a bridge whose ends disappear into infinity and in comparison to which all earthly bridges are only children’s toys, pale symbols. And all our hope is on the other side.” — Bridges, by Ivo Andrić (1933)

Introduction

Metaphors play a key role in shaping our worldview as they can influence how we perceive the world and our place in it and can encourage a specific way of life. When we view familiar metaphors like walls and bridges through new challenges, both our worldview and interactions with the world change. This essay explores how the metaphorical use of walls and bridges has evolved amid wartime circumstances, and what that shift means for the shape of Christian mission in a country five years into a war we did not choose.

Before the Russian invasion, it appeared to be easy to think of bridges and walls as though their moral significance were straightforward. Bridges standing for hope and walls for fear. Bridges signify connections between people, while walls symbolise divisions. Bridges offer a way to meet the other, while walls signal our wish to prevent that encounter. But the experience of living through Russia’s unjust and bloody aggression against Ukraine, has to some extent shaken well-established approaches to those metaphors making us question whether some walls might actually be necessary and whether some bridges, built at the wrong time or leading to the wrong destination, might be used in a violent way. Familiar bridges-and-walls opposition once seemingly so obvious, now calls for more careful thought.

Walls

Walls are an essential aspect of the development of civilisation, which began with the emergence of cities or walled settlements. Most often, walls are built to protect a group of people, to prevent them from leaving a place, or to create an obstacle for others to enter it. In this sense, walls are necessary to shape and preserve our social identity. However, we must be careful that walls do not become a means of creating an “us vs them” mentality, or that they do not foster the sense that those on the other side of the wall are a source of danger becausewe are on the right side of the wall. The Palestinian theologian Munther Isaac has written about what it means to live behind a wall in his case the Israeli West Bank barrier, a concrete fortification six to eight metres high with barbed wire, ditches, and checkpoints [1]. For him, the wall is not just a piece of ugly concrete in his hometown of Bethlehem; it is a narrative of division and displacement. Nevertheless, he continues to envision a future in which the dignity of everyone created in God’s image is honoured. 

History contains numerous instances of great empires attempting to defend themselves against their enemies, but in the end the conquerors always managed to surmount these defences. Consider the case of Berlin. The most notorious wall in modern history was constructed in 1961 when the government of East Germany, controlled by the Soviet regime,built a series of concrete barriers dividing East Berlin from West Berlin. Even though the Communist leaders asserted that these barriers had been built to protect against Nazis and other enemies of the state, their actual purpose was to stop East Germans from escaping to the West. Over 100 people died while trying to get through the complex arrangement of 12-metre-high walls, watchtowers, and electrified fences. The Berlin Wall remained in place for more than 28 years before the authorities finally opened the gates on November 9, 1989. So, all the well-known and lesser-known protective walls have always served the same purpose and had the same drawback: anyone who really wanted to get around a wall sooner or later found a way to tunnel under it, climb over it, or go around it. Walls alone, no matter how long and strong, cannot build a peaceful and harmonious future in the long run.

Bridges

And what about bridges? Bridges represent expanding horizons, reaching out to others, and building connection. A bridge to another place, another person, or another culture invites new experiences and enriches our lives. Bridges connect separated territories, but even after a bridge is built, the connected areas retain their distinctiveness. Imagine that instead of building a bridge between two riverbanks, you filled the riverbed and eliminated the space separating them: there would no longer be two different banks, and their uniqueness would be destroyed in the new unity of space. A bridge, however, allows only limited interaction; it does not eliminate the differences between the banks and the territories it connects. Ivo Andrić, whose short meditation on bridges opens this essay, returned to the same image at far greater length in his novel The Bridge on the Drina, which follows a stone bridge in Bosnia across four centuries as it witnesses the fragile, often violent coexistence of Christians, Muslims, Serbs and Turks, on either bank [2].

Bridges and walls between Ukrainians

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, one of the main challenges we face in Ukraine is to break down the walls between different groups of Ukrainians. For decades, Russian propaganda has aimed to pit Ukrainians from the East of our country against Ukrainians living in the West. Unfortunately, our government has not paid due attention to building bridges between different groups of Ukrainians, and Russia is still taking advantage of this situation. However, the brutal war for survival forces us today to fill the ditches and tear down the walls that divide us. At the same time, the realities of war have also created new social rifts that cause us much pain, and we must consciously work to overcome them.

One positive sign is that the government, civil society, and churches are working more closely together, which is vital for our country’s survival. From the start of the war, churches and civil groups have stepped up to help where the government cannot. The needs are huge: independent estimates say the war has destroyed about a third of Ukraine’s economy [3], forced 3.7 to 5.4 million people to move within the country [4], and pushed another 7.1 million Ukrainians into poverty [5]. More than half of the 2025 state budget is now going to defence and security [6].

In this situation, churches and many civil and charitable organisations have taken on much of the responsibility for helping the most vulnerable people. They provide material, spiritual, legal, and medical support to displaced people, help wounded soldiers and civilians recover, send humanitarian aid to frontline areas, evacuate people from dangerous regions, and run educational and adaptation programmes. The government is also working to become more effective and flexible. Since the Law “On the Military Chaplaincy Service” was introduced in 2022, Ukrainian priests and pastors have taken up posts as full-time chaplains, though as of October 2025 only 43% of the 800 authorised chaplain positions had been filled [7], and many more serve as volunteers who regularly visit military units and frontline areas. This growing role coincides with a shift in how Ukrainians relate to faith: a year into the full-scale invasion, 29% said their trust in God had grown stronger, against 7% who said it had weakened [8], and public trust in the Church has held at around 60% throughout the war [9]. At the same time, different public groups are meeting medical, legal, and other needs during the war. Together, the government, church, and civil society are working to save the country and overcome the consequences of the war while maintaining their unique purpose and identity.

Two recent initiatives show what this bridge-building can look like in practice, at two different lines of division within Ukrainian society. Since 2016, the NGO Dialogue in Action has trained facilitators and hosted dialogues that bring together clergy and civic activists, working from the premise that trust grows through honest dialogue [10]. Within Ukrainian Orthodoxy itself, where the split between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has become one of the deepest walls in Ukrainian religious life, the Sofia Brotherhood, founded in February 2024 at St Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, brings together clergy and laity from different Orthodox jurisdictions willing to talk to one another regardless of which church they belong to [11]. Neither initiative claims that the longstanding disagreements have disappeared, but their leaders believe that a limited bridge is better than no walls of division.

Building bridges requires the willingness of both parties

Both sides of a divided space should want to build a bridge. If one side resists, we are likely dealing with a bridge built out of a desire for conquest or dominance. A good example is the so-called Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Bridge across the Kalmius River, started in 2010. It was meant to demonstrate the Ukrainian government's willingness, under then-President Viktor Yanukovych, to develop the closest cooperation with Russia. The other half of the bridge was installed in the Russian city of Ulyanovsk on the embankment of the SviyagaRiver. However, in reality, the bridge is more like a diving board than a link between the two banks of the river, let alone a symbol of understanding between the two nations. Such a structure only resembles a bridge; in fact, it is a simulacrum like many other bridges built for wartime and not used in peacetime. Although they formally connect two separate pieces of land, they serve no real purpose.

Building bridges requires the right timing

A classic war movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) tells the story of British prisoners of war forced to build a railroad bridge across the Kwai River for their enemies. British Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson tries to build a quality bridge by the deadline the Japanese give him, but he eventually realises it was a mistake because the bridge was built for the enemy's army. The film illustrates an important truth: building bridges requires careful timing. Building a bridge so that the enemy can use it to conquer your country and kill your fellow citizens is definitely the wrong decision. In such circumstances, the right thing to do is to destroy bridges, not build them.

On the night of February 24, 2022, columns of Russian equipment moved out of Crimea across the bridges which connect the peninsula to the southern part of Ukraine. For various reasons, most of the bridges meant to be blown up to delay the enemy’s advance remained intact, allowing the Russians to move forward quickly. However, the courageous act of one soldier moved all of Ukraine in those days. To prevent the enemy convoy from passing, marine combat engineer Vitalii Skakun stayed behind and manually detonated the charges on the bridge leading to the city of Henichesk and was killed in the explosion. He was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine [12]. His act slowed the enemy’s advance and became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian occupation.

We should remember this act every time we hear calls for dialogue, building bridges, and starting peace talks between Ukrainians and Russians. Only when the Russians leave our land and stop killing Ukrainians will we inch closer to the moment when talking about restoring relations will be at least remotely possible. Until then, attempts to build bridges will resemble the story of the bridge over the Kwai River – they will not contribute to understanding, because it is impossible in these conditions, but to the penetration of Russian propaganda into Ukrainian society and the legitimisation of aggression. No matter how important bridges are, if the enemy builds them only to kill you, the right thing to do is to follow the example of sailor Vitaliy Skakun, not Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson.

The question of whether to build bridges or walls can also be explored through the theological and philosophical analysis of the practice of hospitality. As the French philosopher Jacques Derrida pointed out, “absolute” hospitality means opening our space to a stranger without reservation, without even asking his name, since asking a name already makes the guest a subject of the law, of reciprocity and of calculation [13]. But how can such hospitality be practised when your country is being attacked by an enemy determined to destroy everything you hold dear? At the Summer School of Theology “Theology of the Other under Pressure of the Empire” organised by our Eastern European Institute of Theology in 2022 [14], the American philosopher and theologian John Caputo offered an important corrective: hospitality should be understood from the point of view of the one in need, not extended to someone whose evil intentions are obvious [15]. If an enemy aims to destroy the future itself, we should not build bridges but destroy them.

We might consider Ukraine’s experience with a concrete bridge that reflects the metaphor of building or destroying bridges during times of conflict. Following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia began constructing the so-called Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula. Completed in 2018, it became a symbol of pride for President Putin and a visible marker of Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory. Throughout the full-scale war, it was used as an important supply route for the Russian army, which is why Ukrainian forces have attacked it on several occasions in order to interrupt the supply lines to Crimea and from there on to southern Ukraine [16]. This example shows how the choice of building or destroying bridges must be considered in light of the reality of threat and justice. The Kerch Strait Bridge highlights the tension between extending connections and protecting against harm, showing that building bridges is not always the right choice when violence and injustice threaten.

Building bridges involves risk, and some bridges do not survive it

Building a bridge always involves risk. When you build a bridge to the opposite bank, you lose some of your safety, because the traffic runs both ways. Not only can you cross to the other side, but those on the other side can come to you. This is why the ideal of unconditional hospitality has faced criticism. Irish philosopher Richard Kearney argues that Derrida underestimates the need for an ethical distinction between a friendly and an evil stranger, between saints and psychopaths. Kearney tells the story of Dorothy Day, who ran hospitality houses in poor American neighbourhoods. One night a drunken stranger began banging on her door, and she had to decide whether this was “Jack the Ripper or Jesus Christ” [17]. Even radical hospitality, Kearney argues, needs discernment before the welcome.

Not all bridges stand the test of time or extreme circumstances. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, evangelical associations and theological institutions in the former Soviet republics continued to cooperate, and many Christians maintained friendly relations on a personal level. Many bridges had survived the political changes. However, the outbreak of Russian aggression in 2022 led to a complete break in relations between Ukrainian and Russian Protestants. Some leaders and members of Russian Protestant unions openly supported the invasion; others tried to ignore this dreadful reality. Still, no denomination has expressed solidarity with suffering Ukrainians or has spoken out against their country's actions. It is known that the leaders of Russian evangelical unions and seminaries cooperate with the Russian authorities, for example, inviting representatives of the Russian administration to their celebrations, reading out their greetings and sending letters of support to the Russian President. This echoes the early persecuted church reading out the greetings of a pagan emperor during worship, or, in the days of Nazism, churches reading out the greetings of Hitler.

In private, some Russian evangelical leaders and theologians claim to oppose the war. From my perspective, for Russian Christians to be against the war means: (1) openly and publicly condemning Russia’s aggression; (2) taking responsibility for the crimes committed by their country and its people; (3) condemning the ideology of Russian imperialism and the “Russian world” that inspires Russian society to almost unanimously support aggression against Ukraine; and (4) publicly expressing solidarity with Ukrainians suffering from the war. It is worth maintaining communication with those capable of such steps, but at best we are talking only about individuals. As for the rest, right now it is not the time for bridges.

A dream of a different future

It is difficult to think about building bridges during war and conflict. But we still need to think about moving toward a future different from the present. Imagination and dreams are where bridges begin. Walter Brueggemann, in his classic book The Prophetic Imagination, discusses the role of faith and imagination in resisting the political forces that dominate our consciousness and actions [18]. He shows how the role of the biblical prophets was to call people to a genuine experience of tragic events, such as the destruction of Jerusalem, as a first step toward believing that other ways of living in the world are possible. Grief carries the risk of despair, but it can also become the seedbed of hope that the cycle of war and enslavement can be broken. We recognise and acknowledge the reality of our world: torn, split, and full of confrontations, wars, and conflicts. But we refuse to believe this state of affairs is the only possible one.

Conclusions

After five years of a war we did not choose, our metaphors of walls and bridges have had to mature. This war has shown us that walls are not always bad and bridges are not always good: it all depends on who builds them, when, and for what purpose. What then have these years taught us regarding walls and bridges in a war situation?

First, there is a difference between a wall built as a means of self-defence and one built out of despair. A wall which keeps an aggressor’s tanks and propaganda outside guards the vulnerable from a genuine evil at the door. This does not mean rejecting hospitality as an ideal; rather, as John Caputo insisted, an enemy determined to destroy is not a guest to be welcomed but one that must be resisted.

Next, we must build bridges within the country before attempting to build them between countries. The most urgent bridges that Ukraine needs are those crossing the divisions which the war has brought to light and, in some cases, has even widened within our own society - between soldiers and civilians, between the displaced and those who remained, among different regions, generations, and denominations. The fact that cooperation is already developing between the government, the church, and the volunteers shows that such bridges can indeed be built.

Third, building a bridge requires the willingness of both sides. Peace and reconciliation talks conducted while Russia continues to kill Ukrainians, like the so-called Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Bridge across the Kalmius, only resemble a bridge while in fact is serving conquest. Genuine dialogue becomes possible only with those individuals and communities who meet the conditions we outlined above: public condemnation of the aggression, acceptance of responsibility, rejection of the ideology of the “Russian world,” and solidarity with Ukraine’s suffering.

Fourth, we must exercise discernment. As Richard Kearney shows us, hospitality without discernment is not a virtue but naive openness. The church's role in wartime should be to help people tell the difference between the neighbour who should be welcomed and the aggressor who should be resisted

Dr. Roman Soloviy, Eastern European Institute of Theology / Langham Literature

References

1. Isaac, Munther. The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020.

2. Andrić, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. Translated by Lovett F. Edwards. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

3. Rott, Nathan, Claire Harbage, and Kateryna Malofieieva. “Millions of Ukrainians Have Escaped the War. Many Still Can’t Find Enough Work.” NPR, November 1, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/01/1132167234/russia-ukraine-war-unemployment-displaced-economy.

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9. Razumkov Centre and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. “Ukrainian Society, State and Church in Wartime: Church and Religious Situation in Ukraine 2025.” Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, March 4, 2026. https://www.kas.de/en/web/ukraine/single-title/-/content/ukrains-ke-suspil-stvo-derzava-i-cerkva-pid-cas-vijni-cerkovno-religijna-situacia-v-ukraini-2025.

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11. “U Kyievi Zasnovano Sofiivske Bratstvo dlia Obiednannia Pravoslavnykh” [Sofia Brotherhood Founded in Kyiv to Unite Orthodox Christians]. Christians for Ukraine, February 8, 2024. https://c4u.org.ua/media/news/2397.

12. “At Beginning of Full-Scale War, Ukrainian Defenders Blew Up Two Bridges and Several Dams on Border with Crimea.” Ukrainska Pravda, September 21, 2023. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/09/21/7420800/.

13. Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

14. Eastern European Institute of Theology. “Summer School of Theology 2022: Theology of the Other under Pressure of the Empire.” Eastern European Institute of Theology,accessed September 17, 2026. https://eeit-edu.info/en/litnia-shkola-teolohii-2022-teolohiia-inshoho-pid-tyskom-imperii/.

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16. “Ukraine Strikes Kerch Bridge in Crimea with Underwater Explosives.” Euronews, June 3, 2025. https://www.euronews.com/2025/06/03/ukraine-strikes-kerch-bridge-in-crimea-with-underwater-explosives.

17. Zimmermann, Jens, ed. Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

18. Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 40th anniversary ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018.