Editor’s note: Although historically close, relations between Ukrainian and Russian Protestants had become strained even before Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In 2014, Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region led to the severance of longstanding relationships between ministries in the two countries [see East-West Church and Ministry Report theme issue on the Ukrainian crisis, vol. 22 (2014), no. 3 (2014), and multiple responses in vol. 23 (2015), nos. 1 and 2.]
Ukrainian Protestants supported the pro-democracy sentiment of the 2013-14 protests on Kyiv’s Maidan Square that preceded the Kremlin’s military intervention, and valued the freedoms it gave their churches in post-Maidan Ukraine (see Mikhail Cherenkov, “Churches as Agents of Change in Eurasia,” East-West Church Report, vol. 26 (2018), vol. 26, no.3, 15-16; “Two Local Pastors Discuss Politics and the Church in Ukraine,” East-West Church Report, vol. 29 (2021), no. 3, 11-14.)
Ukrainian Protestants were also alienated by the muted response from some Russian Protestants to multiple cases of torture and theft suffered by their fellow believers in occupied Ukraine from 2014 onwards (see Joy Ireland and Mark R. Elliott, “Detention, Threats, and Violence Against Christian Minority Believers in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea (February-December 2014)” and “Church and Christian NGO Seizures, Restrictions, and Damage in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea (April 2014-March 2015), East-West Church and Ministry Report, vol. 23 (2015), no.3, 2-9.
This year’s invasion has alienated the two communities even more, perhaps irrevocably. Particular anguish has come from the discovery of mass atrocities following the Russian military’s withdrawal from areas to the northwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in late March. Two neighboring suburbs especially affected, Bucha and Irpin, contained an atypically large Protestant population, being home to more than two dozen mission organizations, including Youth With A Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, and Mission Eurasia, in addition to a dozen Protestant churches, including a 700-member Baptist church.
In Bucha, one of those found shot dead by the roadside was Vitaly Vinogradov, dean of Kyiv Slavic Evangelical Seminary. Among a group of nine civilian men identified as executed by Russian troops in Bucha was the son of Liudmyla Nakonechnaya, a graduate of Irpin Bible Seminary (see Yousur Al-Hlou et al, “New Evidence Shows How Russian Soldiers Executed Men in Bucha,” New York Times, 19 May 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/russia-bucha-ukraine-executions.html.)
The profound impact of these events is expressed in the following passages by Rev. Dr. Roman Soloviy, who is based in western Ukraine. They originally appeared as Ukrainianlanguage public social media posts
