Refugees And Religion In Russia’s War Against Ukraine
Ukrainian refugees arrive to the border of Moldova for shelter. Creative Commons photo.
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(OPINION) Russia’s war on Ukraine and its attempt to destroy the very identity of Ukrainians is an unmitigated disaster. If there is any silver lining in this present nightmare, it is the army of angels of mercy that has stepped forward to comfort and care for millions of Ukrainian refugees.
Ukraine has had a warm spot in my heart since my first visit there in 1974. My wife, Darlene, and I worshipped in Kyiv and came away blessed. In the church courtyard after the service, my wife gave a little girl a pocket calendar with a picture of Christ on it, and immediately a crowd gathered around us to get a glimpse. Believers we met felt isolated and under siege.
From that first visit worshipping in Ukraine and Russia, I knew I wanted to research and publish what I could about the struggles faced by Christians in the Soviet Union and later the post-Soviet states. I feel that way especially now, since the full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24. What is happening in this war is tragic and heartbreaking. I feel it personally because I have so many friends in Ukraine who are in danger and have fled from harm’s way.
The war has a religious dimension, starting with the refugee crisis. On March 13, the Russian war on Ukraine took the life of an adult daughter of Gennadi Mokhnenko, orphanage director and pastor of the Pentecostal Church of Good Changes in Mariupol. Vika, the 27th of 35 orphans adopted by Pastor Gennadi and his wife, fell victim to a Russian tank shell that destroyed her apartment. In anguished lament, her distraught father addressed Putin mockingly, asking him if this was his “demilitarization and denazification.”
“And your tanks naturally ‘save’ us and our children,” he said. “Inhumane. Heaven will present you with a bill. … Forgive me, daughter, that I could not protect you. I really tried.”
More fortunate, relatively speaking, is 11-year-old Hasan, who somehow managed to escape Russian shells and made his way alone from Zaporizhe in eastern Ukraine to his siblings in Bratislava, Slovakia — a distance of over 1,000 miles. Less than a week before Vika’s death in Mariupol, Hasan crossed into Slovakia “with a school bag on his shoulders and a plastic bag in hand.” Here is how a friend of mine, Bratislava resident and longtime Navigator staffer Milan Cicel, reported this child’s long-distance escape:
Hasan was sent by his Ukrainian mother to safety because she could not leave her bedridden mother. His case is dramatic also because he and his siblings are originally refugees from Aleppo, Syria, where his father died. What is encouraging is that the whole of Europe is energized and mobilized to help. Even otherwise divided political parties unite to help Ukraine…. What EU nations could not achieve themselves, Putin made a reality with his aggressive military politics. There is a hope. The Lord is smiling.
The dimensions of the refugee displacement
In eight months, Russia uprooted between 14 and 20 million Ukrainians, according to the U.N. office for refugees. That is equal to half to two-thirds of World War II’s total of 30 million displaced persons over seven years (1939-45).
Thankfully, this extraordinary humanitarian crisis has called forth an equally extraordinary civilian army to render aid to the homeless. Included among the long list of providers of assistance are agencies of the United Nations and the European Union and a host of governments, foundations, relief and development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, churches, Christian ministries and untold numbers of concerned individuals acting on their own. My focus is on just one element of this tide of humanitarian outreach: the work of Protestant churches and ministries. Certainly, the impressive refugee relief work of Catholics (especially in western Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia) and of Orthodox (especially in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria), deserves comprehensive treatment. But practically speaking, Catholic and Orthodox efforts will best be covered by authors with firsthand connections with Catholic and Orthodox churches and charities.
Assessing best practices in Ukrainian relief based on survey findings
The plight facing today’s Ukrainian refugees and Western relief efforts on their behalf bring to mind a similar humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The outpouring of Western relief efforts in this earlier instance occurred on behalf of 1) economically vulnerable East Europeans freed from Soviet domination and 2) impoverished Soviet citizens following the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Many in the West responded with commendable charitable initiatives to relieve the suffering and want that followed in the train of the political upheavals of 1989-91. Unfortunately, mistakes sometimes accompanied assistance such as cross-cultural miscues, overpromising and underperforming, and an unhelpful “West knows best” attitude.
In the present Ukrainian refugee relief effort, one may observe a repetition of much effective aid — and some instances of missteps. In the interest of affirming best practices and discouraging ill-advised actions, in the summer of 2022 I surveyed frontline Ukraine refugee relief workers, aid administrators and aid recipients, recognizing that they have much to offer in the way of hard-earned advice.
Early on, survey responses barely trickled in—understandably so because I was asking for information from extremely busy people under great stress. But in July and August I received a wealth of replies that were both insightful and detailed. Through decades advising college students writing research papers, I cautioned against lengthy quotes from sources. Instead, I recommended summarizing, paraphrasing and using brief, direct quotations sparingly. Well, I broke my own rule. The responses I received were often just too powerful and practical to cut short. So my paper ended up being 38 pages in length. With that concern in mind, I condensed the article’s key findings to a one-page summary:
Ten commandments for Ukrainian refugee relief workers
I. Keep promises. “Never make a commitment that does not have a very high prospect of timely fulfillment.”
II. Overcome ethnocentrism. “Those enjoying a superior economic position too often assume they somehow, therefore, possess superior judgement.
III. Learn to listen. “Listening to and learning from Ukrainians … is a recipe for more effective delivery of vital humanitarian aid … and can reduce the temptation to inflate one’s contribution.”
IV. Exercise humility and be willing to sacrifice. In Poland, “Mrs. Irena took in Liya and Natalya with their children … in her two-room apartment. Seventy-year-old Irena gave the best room to the refugees.”
V. Understand the depth of trauma refugees are experiencing. “Some refugees have lost their friends or family members. They’ve seen death. … They are often unable to speak. They are devastated, shocked, grieved. When you see them, you understand that you need to sit with them in silence, cry with them, hug them.”
VI. Avoid burnout. “The Indian medical student (in Hungary) volunteering nearly nonstop would have done well to take a few days’ break in Budapest because mental fatigue and burnout are very real concerns for relief personnel.”
VII. Be flexible and willing to accept directions. “Are you willing to eat, sleep, and work in very difficult circumstances? Are you willing to accept instruction and direction?”
VIII. Give appropriate aid. Along with innumerable accounts of freely offered food, shelter and transportation for Ukrainian refugees, some offerings were “not really needed.” Other “missteps … emerge from great enthusiasm, but little willingness for cooperation or little attention to information about actual needs.”
IX. Make the most of partnerships. “A noteworthy feature of the current Ukrainian refugee relief effort is the frequency with which diverse parties cooperate … within and across borders, between individual churches, between denominations, (and) between churches and parachurch NGOs and mission agencies.”
X. Be accountable. “To the extent possible, close monitoring of the distribution of funds and material … should be a priority even in the midst of war, ‘not because donors suspect misuse of funds, but rather (because) audits protect all involved with the result that transparency produces greater trust.’”
What role does religion play in the invasion of Ukraine ?
In addition to these ten commandments for Ukrainian refugee relief work, let me highlight key religious dimensions of the war. In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine gained autocephalous, meaning self-governing, status from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate strongly opposes this separate Ukrainian church. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and Russian President Putin couch their opposition in terms of a politically aggressive ideology called “Russkii mir” or the Russian World. It claims that wherever there are Russian speakers abroad, for example in Ukraine in the present moment, then the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church have the right and a duty to interfere across state borders to command the loyalty of these Russian speakers to the Kremlin and its majority church.
Where did this Russian church-state propaganda come from? Following the rejection of Marxism and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin chose Russian Orthodoxy as a substitute state ideology centered on the concept of Moscow the Third Rome. The mythology is that after the fall of Rome, Constantinople, with its Eastern Orthodox Church, became the second capital of Christendom. Then with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, Moscow became the Third Rome, which would be the final capital of the world’s only true Christian realm. Moscow the Third Rome not only provides the Russian federation a sham sacred purpose for its existence but also resurrects the dream of the reconstitution of the former Russian/Soviet colonial empire. Patriarch Kirill’s promotion of the Russian World and Moscow the Third Rome shortsightedly ties the fate of his church to that of his patron Putin, the same tragic mistake made by the Orthodox Church in its defense of czarist Russia in its death throes.
In close proximity to notions of the “Russian World” and Orthodox triumphalism is Patriarch Kirill’s and Putin’s messianic belief that Russia is the world’s last best hope for the preservation of traditional Christian values. This is an astounding claim in the face of their obscenely lavish lifestyles, Putin’s multibillion-dollar theft of state resources, and his likely instigation of dozens of murders of inconvenient political opponents and opposition journalists. Both Patriarch Kirill and Putin falsely assert that Russia is a spiritual bastion against Western decadence and immorality and secularism. And this propaganda is despite Russia having high rates of alcoholism and domestic abuse and very low levels of church attendance (1% to 5% per Sunday), even lower than in many countries in the West. Kirill and Putin claim Ukraine is adrift spiritually by attempting to join the West and distance itself from Russia. But the fact is that Christian churches in Ukraine have a much stronger following than do churches in Russia. That goes for Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics — all have much more energetic and free existence than churches in Russia. And since the 1990s, Ukraine has also been the home of a great missionary sending movement, perhaps the largest of any country in Europe.
I would like to close my remarks with an admonition for Christian solidarity with Ukrainians under siege. To that end, let me relate an East European folk story told to me by Dr. Peter Kuzmic, longtime president of Evangelical Theological Seminary in Croatia.
Four angels were present at the creation of the world. The first angel proclaimed, “Lord, your creation is beautiful. How did you do it?” The question of a scientist.
The second angel proclaimed,” Lord, your creation is beautiful. Why did you create it?” The question of a philosopher.
The third angel proclaimed, “Lord, your creation is beautiful. Can I have it?” The question of a materialistic, fallen angel.
The fourth angel proclaimed, “Lord, your creation is beautiful. Can I help?” The question of an angel of mercy.
In the midst of this tragic war in Ukraine, may we aspire to be in the ranks of the angels of mercy.
This article was adapted from a speech Mark R. Elliott gave in November at the Mission Eurasia Ukraine Consultation, which included 17 Ukrainian participants, including two members of the Ukrainian Rada and the mayor of Irpin.
Mark R. Elliott, who holds a doctorate from the University of Kentucky, is a retired professor of European and Russian history and editor emeritus of the East-West Church Report.