Exclusive: I'm in Ukraine now. This is how it feels

These are dark days for Ukraine. And I mean that, in the first instance, quite literally.

As the bleak skies and bitter cold of winter set in, Russia has renewed its strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a cruel strategy to break the morale of the nation as it swiftly approaches four years since full-scale invasion by its eastern neighbour.

Power has had to be rationed, and significant pre-scheduled portions of the day and night are without electricity.

I am in Ukraine this week to launch Grace Baptist Partnership’s Ukrainian language translation of Dan Steel’s helpful book Wise Church Planting: Twelve Pitfalls to Avoid in Planting New Churches.

As we neared the address of our accommodation, the air was filled with the roar of generators. The lifts were not working, and we learned that the flat we had booked was on the 13th floor. With a not-yet-two-year-old child and luggage, this was not going to be practical, so we made other arrangements. But what of those for whom this is daily life?

It is not difficult to see how such experiences - multiplied across millions of people throughout a winter that is only just beginning - are immediately frustrating, progressively wearying, and ultimately demoralising. We adjust and adapt to survive, but how many adaptations can be made, and for how long?

The darkness has a way of getting into the soul. If only the darkness stopped with power shortages.

The ongoing war: Conscription

With air-space having remained closed since February 2022, we entered the country by train from Poland.

The train took us through the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. It is far from the war’s front-lines, but nowhere is completely safe: the day before we passed through, Ternopil suffered the deadliest Russian attack on civilians in 2025. So far, 34 are confirmed dead, and 95 are wounded - 18 of whom are children.

The nation’s existential crisis and manpower shortages on the front-lines have left the armed forces with little choice but to resort to old-school methods: calling up men on the spot at random checkpoints, and sending them for basic training and service.

On our first night in town, my father-in-law (overseer of the Baptist churches in Khmelnytskyi oblast) was pulled over by a conscription officer. He has an exemption and, lacking my passport, I produced my British driving licence. We were waved on, but not all are so fortunate.

An SUV sits abandoned where its driver was conscripted a few weeks ago. A deacon in attendance at a roundtable I led was conscripted as he travelled home. There was no lawful option for him to avoid it and he was preparing to go. It was, I am told, only by a miracle that the conscription officers later released him.

Our conversation around the table that first night revolved around these and other internal issues, not least a massive corruption scandal implicating some of President Zelenskyy’s associates, who allegedly plotted to skim $100 million from the energy sector through contract kickbacks: not what anyone wants to hear, especially in a war-time energy crisis.

To people who have already given so much to fight enemies without, the reminder that there are still enemies within has been exasperating.

Peace plan, or pause plan?

The second night, the conversation shifted. A 28-point peace plan had been leaked, apparently developed by the USA and Russia, absent from Ukrainian input.

It offered nothing particularly new: the list constitutes maximalist demands Russia has repeatedly made throughout the year in a Trumpward performance of interest in peace. It pretends to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty while (contradictorily) dictating the terms of that sovereignty: territory they should give up, borders they should change, who they can and can’t be friends with, how big their army can be, what weapons they can have, when they should hold their next elections, and so forth.

Messaging from lawmakers in the USA was inconsistent: some insisted it was an entirely Russian document – and indeed, Kremlin fingerprints were all over it. However, others in government insisted that it was an American document. Financial benefits to be enjoyed by the USA according to the plan, betray that it is not as Russian as some might hope and that every country has its exploitative profiteers.

In short, the 28 points as leaked are not so much a peace plan but a pause plan, and one with little benefit to Ukraine.

The aforementioned Ternopil atrocity did not produce reinvigorated pressure from the West on Russia. Why should it? These are hardly new developments.

I sat with internally displaced pastors from Avdiivka in Donetsk: there is no Avdiivka to go back to; its people have all been scattered or slain. The same is true of a great many places. One missile-struck block of flats is not going to turn the dial, when entire towns lay in ruins.

No, instead of facing retributive justice, common sentiment here is that Russia has been rewarded by an ally even entertaining these 28 points, side-lining European allies as irrelevancies left to - rather pathetically - play catch-up.

President Zelenskyy and his team are working around the clock to address the plan’s inadequacies and engage meaningfully in the process. A summit in Geneva is reportedly making progress. But we have been here before. It all seems like a repeating cycle, complete with President Trump raging on social media about perceived Ukrainian ingratitude.

Questions

While driving to a remote village in the north of Zhytomyr oblast, Google Maps misdirected us down an old road covered in cracks, pits, and holes, lined with gnarled trees, separating our SUV from the bare black soil of the fields around. Only uncertainty was in front of us, and no one was behind us.

A murder of crows swarmed disconcertingly around us. It is an apt picture for the scene in recent weeks. Where will the broken road of these years of suffering lead? Are things really as bleak as they seem? Are the crows circling to pick apart and take what they can? Some questions presently defy answers.

Back to the block of flats where I started my ponderings… As I stood outside, looking up at the block of flats that would have housed us, I saw only darkness. And then we saw it: the warm glow of Christmas lights, twinkling from one solitary window in a corner at the top of the building. They shone, not powered by national infrastructure or personal generator, but doubtless a couple of small batteries. And yet, there was light.

“The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it,” (John 1v5).

So tonight, before speaking to a gathering that crowded into a Kyiv shop basement turned church to learn about “wise church planting”, we sang: “When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say: Blessed be the name of the Lord!”