With tensions remaining high in the region despite Russia’s recent military pullback from the Ukrainian border, evangelicals on both sides of the border have spoken out wanting peace.
The Russian Evangelical Alliance has led calls to ‘restore the peaceful relations between the peoples of both countries’, while churches in Ukraine have been encouraged to ‘pray and fast for the peace in our land’.
Secretary General of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, Vitaly Vlasenko, said: ‘I have a negative attitude to this conflict … I very much want friendly relations between the peoples of our countries to be restored’. The aim is to ‘live in peace and harmony and we must do everything possible to reduce the tension of the conflicting parties, with people’s and church diplomacy. And, if possible, work out a new plan for a peaceful settlement’.
From Ukraine, Ruslan Kukharchuk, a journalist founder of the Novomedia Association and an evangelical Christian, warned of the ‘intensification of the Russian military presence’, which caused the death of at least ten Ukrainian soldiers in April. He thinks Vladimir Putin is trying to ‘destabilise the situation in Ukraine’. But, despite this, ‘during the last two weeks almost all Ukrainian evangelicals have issued a public call to pray and fast for peace in our land. Prayer events really intensified in April’.
Ukraine’s president and former comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a promise to end the war. He has called for a revamp of the 2015 peace accord, with a bigger diplomatic role for the US, UK and Canada in ending the conflict.
Everyone has faith – what makes ours different?
Christians can feel helplessly situated in a world stymied by the embargoed Strait of Hormuz (if it's still closed by …