(ANALYSIS) Saturday marks two years since Putin’s Russia attacked Ukraine and unleashed a full-scale invasion, with horrific atrocities against the Ukrainian nation, in an attempt to destroy Ukraine as a country.
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The work of five Ukrainian artists, whose art varies across artistic tradition and highlight the beauty of Ukraine and its people, is currently on view at the Sheen Center’s Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Gallery. The exhibition, “Beauty During Wartime and Before,” is particularly meant to honor resilience and faith during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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(ANALYSIS) In October 2023, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, a nongovernmental organization founded by Amal and George Clooney, filed three cases with the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office, requesting an investigation into crimes committed in Ukraine.
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(OPINION) Is Ukraine a “just war”? The good news for Russia’s Vladimir Putin: A significant national leader announces that his invasion of Ukraine is a “just fight” that will end with “a great victory in the sacred struggle.” The bad news: The speaker is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, so what’s “just” is defined by probably the most despised despot on the planet and what’s “sacred” by an atheist who works to exterminate all religion.
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Two Ukrainian Christians, separated in age by a half-century, experienced the love of Jesus and the horrors of war. Artem Vinogradar, 22, died in mid-August while fighting against invading Russian forces. Two weeks later, longtime church leader and theologian Igor Kozlovsky, who spent nearly two years as the prisoner of pro-Russian separatists, died of a heart attack. He was 70.
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As the Netherlands celebrated a day 2,000-plus years ago when people of many nations became the first Christian church, a multinational, multiethnic mix of believers from from Ukraine, from Western Europe, from Africa — even from Russia — gathered to praise God.
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Eduard Charov criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on social media, asking, “Would Jesus Christ have gone to kill in Ukraine?” The FSB alerted the Prosecutor's Office. A Sverdlovsk Region court fined him for “discrediting” the Armed Forces and “inciting hatred” towards state authorities.
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Mykhailo Yavorsky, a 40-year-old Christian, is appealing against a one-year jail term handed down on April 6 for refusing mobilization on grounds of conscience. If he loses his planned appeal he will be sent to prison. “I would not carry weapons and would not put on a uniform, as I can't kill a person,” Yavorsky told Forum 18.
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Ivano-Frankivsk police told Protestant conscientious objector Vitaly Alekseenko “to be ready to be taken to prison.” on Feb. 20. He lost his appeal against his one-year jail term in January. His would be the first wartime conscientious objector jailing. “Unfortunately, the right to alternative service does not extend to martial law,” said Viktor Yelensky of the State Service for Ethnic Policies and Freedom of Conscience.
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Christians from around the world gathered online Feb. 23 to pray for Ukraine — just hours before the grim anniversary of the Russian invasion. But the ‘rough year’ has also been a year of growth and opportunity.
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Eastern European Mission, a ministry founded in 1961 by seven young couples from Abilene Christian University in Texas to distribute Bibles, is expanding its first-ever relief efforts, which were launched after Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago.
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(OPINION) Caught in the middle, leaders of the historic Ukrainian Orthodox Church say the “Holy Rus” is a historical reality but insist that this makes Russia’s invasion even worse — the sin of brothers killing brothers.
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Russia’s National Guard seized two priests in Russian-occupied Berdyansk on Nov. 16. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Donetsk Exarchate denies Russian claims that Father Ivan Levytsky and Father Bohdan Heleta stored explosives in the church and had “extremist” literature.
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Church members and relatives in Ukraine have been unable to find out who is holding Council of Churches Baptist Pastor Leonid Ponomaryov and his wife Tatyana, where and why. Armed and masked men in military uniform seized them on Sept. 21 from their home in Russian-occupied Mariupol. Neighbors “distinctly heard groans and cries” as the masked men took them away “in an unknown direction,” local Baptists said.
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Ukrainian-American family members detailed their difficult journey from the Eastern European nation of Ukraine to the U.S. during a recent missions class at the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City.
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(OPINION) Russia’s security strategy gives prominent weight to concerns about traditional religious values. Diplomatic negotiations between Russia and the West to end the war in Ukraine will likely center on some of these concerns for many years to come.
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State censorship and control of religious communities increased following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Lutheran Archbishop Dietrich Brauer, who has left Russia, said that, at the start of the war, President Putin's administration made “a clear demand” of religious leaders to speak out in favor of the invasion.
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An Anchorage congregation with members from Ukraine, Russia and other Slavic nations is working to feed and support families forced to flee their homes. “We can’t just sit here,” church member Zori Opanasevych says. “We have to do something.”
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The war instigated by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, with over 4 million Ukrainians displaced and another 7 million internally displaced in western Ukraine, according to U.N. agencies. Photos and videos from formerly Russian occupied towns like Bucha showing executed and tortured civilians only add to the horror and fervor for the war to end.
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