Editor’s note: This issue of the East-West Church Report features a range of Christians in Ukraine relaying their experiences of—and responses to—the ongoing armed conflict in the country’s eastern Donbas region. 

As of February 2019, this conflict had claimed approximately 13,000 lives—a quarter of them civilians—and injured a further 30,000 people, according to the United Nations. Following particularly heavy fighting during 2014-15, the struggle between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists remains locked in an uneasy stalemate. A 300-mile contact line now divides two separatist-controlled entities—the unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics—from the rest of Ukraine. Mandated to log ceasefire violations, the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine has observed hundreds of thousands of such instances, committed by both sides.

Outsider analysis of—and factional commentary on—this conflict are ubiquitous, especially on social media. Seeking to convey the insights of local Christians as fully and authentically as possible, the Report here presents their voices in largely unmediated format.