7 minute read
God’s mercy in the midst of brutality
The tension in Kyiv grew increasingly palpable throughout January and February 2022. Although the Russian invasion had started in Spring 2014 and had already taken some 15,000 lives, the US had been predicting a further full-scale invasion since the autumn of 2021. I first became concerned in late November when Putin explicitly denied that he would invade.
US intelligence had information that the Russians would surround Kyiv, which has been our family’s home since 2007, when my wife Sarah and I first came as missionaries to work alongside the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ukraine at the Evangelical Reformed Seminary of Ukraine (ERSU). We began to stock our seminary building with food and a generator to receive refugees in case Kyiv was spared attack. On 12 February, when I learnt that the US embassy had begun destroying its computers and files, we agreed with my seminary colleagues that it would be better for us to temporarily relocate.
As I led our church plant Bible study group the next day, our sadness at having to leave was heightened by the fact that none of our Ukrainian friends believed the full-scale attack would happen. For many people, that view changed with Putin’s speech on 21 February (in which he denied Ukraine’s existence) – Ukrainians understood this as a clear declaration of war (if not the genocide that would actually ensue).
Back in Kilrea, Northern Ireland, we continued to pray for the best while still anticipating the worst. Even the howling storms that week seemed portentous. We awoke on 24 February to the horrible confirmation of war (and snow covering the ground). At 5 a.m. in Kyiv, my colleague Fedir was awoken by loud noises. At 5.11 a.m., our colleague Valerii in Odesa messaged him saying, “I hear the launch of missiles from the sea”. A minute later in Kyiv, Fedir’s building started shaking from a series of explosions. There were missile strikes across Ukraine including Odesa, Kharkiv and Kyiv, while Kherson was occupied. There are Presbyterian congregations in all of these cities.
Realising refugees would not be able to come to Kyiv, the remaining seminary staff evacuated to Western Ukraine. Six people and their luggage squeezed into our family’s small car for the trip to Lviv. Traffic and queues for rationed petrol turned a six-hour journey into 36 hours. This was not the first time that Fedir, originally from Donetsk, had had to uproot his family to flee Russian missiles. For the next six weeks, my colleague Oleksii and our administrator Iurii would help transport some of the floods of refugees to the border.
Sarah and I had lived in Kyiv during the Euromaidan protests of 2013–14 and knew many neighbours and congregants who had risked sniper fire on Independence Square to stand for a more democratic future for their children. But even we were struck by the heroic bravery of so many of our Ukrainian friends on 24 February, especially my fellow Presbyterian ministers. While their congregants remained in the city, not one of our ministers considered leaving their cities. That’s heroic – firstly, because on 24 February the whole world believed that Russia would quickly prevail, and secondly because when Russia invaded the Donbas in 2014, numerous Protestant ministers were tortured or murdered. Our Ukrainian Presbyterian ministers remained with their people fully conscious of the real risk to their own lives.
Three of our seminary students immediately volunteered to join the army, our administrator joined six weeks later. One of our students, Kirill was already doing alternative service as a medic at a hospital in Zaporizhzhia. From day one of the full-scale invasion, he was plunged into the gory trauma of trying to save the lives of the guys defending their homeland – bodies ripped apart by mortar shells. Almost all of his time outside the hospital is spent volunteering and fundraising to buy needed medical supplies for clinics, hospitals and the frontlines.
Our seminary soon received offers of humanitarian aid for Ukraine from all around the world (a large portion of it from folk in the PCI). Because the Ukrainian banking system remained functional, we could instantly put funds on to the debit cards of those who needed it in Ukraine. This included oneoff sums for refugees fleeing to safety in the West. We were able to buy medical supplies for Kirill and others.
In one tragic case, we were able to help pay for a complex operation for fiveyear-old Mikhail with shrapnel lodged in his skull. His family of five had been fleeing Nikolaev in their car when the Russians threw a grenade at it, instantly killing the boy’s mother and sister. We have been able to provide petrol and bulletproof jackets for many volunteers taking supplies into dangerous cities, and help repair their vehicles. Another of our students, Mikhail from Odesa, has personally organised aid trips into Russian-occupied territories, where the needs (and risks) are greatest. We were also able to provide a bulletproof jacket for his drivers. A graduate of our online Bible college has severe cerebral palsy. He lived with his frail mother in a town that last April looked like being seized by the Russians. Thankfully, we were able to urgently evacuate them to Kyiv. Evangelicals continue to be at the forefront of much of the volunteer work.
During those first days and weeks, everyone pulled together to do what they could to fight for Ukraine’s survival. With the enormity of the pastoral needs, many Ukrainian ministers will remember it as one of the busiest periods of our lives. With some of our Kyiv church plant in Finland, Poland or other parts of Ukraine, we continued our Bible studies via Zoom. This fellowship became even more precious, both for those in countries in which no one else speaks their language and for those facing daily stress in Kyiv. As the sickening cruelty of war crimes seemed to daily plunge to new depths, Psalm 7 was of special comfort to our family and our church plant. David speaks of his innocence in the matter of which his enemy accused him, and he asks God to judge his enemy such that the evil of the evildoer will return upon his own head.
ERSU resumed classes in late April 2022 by Zoom. We also offered a free crash course in chaplaincy and will soon be offering a course to help pastors better counsel those traumatised by the war.
Since last October, I have returned to Kyiv four times for our seminary modules. All of our churches continue to meet for worship. Life in Kyiv, now far from the frontline, continues as normal in many ways, and as I drive into the seminary there are the usual rush-hour traffic jams. Less normal are the frequent air raid sirens – heard several times a day and sounding every bit as eerie as in WWII films. In May of this year, the Russians targeted Kyiv with 159 objects – kamikaze drones and hypersonic, cruise and ballistic missiles. Last winter, the streets and motorways were pitch black as the Russians targeted the electricity network. Thousands of families have been forcibly separated by the war. The death toll is huge. Yet God’s mercy has been evident. Against all initial expectations, and in answer to prayer, the Russian army abandoned Kyiv and all northern Ukraine at the end of March 2022. This ensured the survival of Ukraine and her churches. God has enabled the seminary training of Ukraine’s future pastors to continue. God has blessed ten Ukrainian families (we helped place) right here in Northern Ireland. From Londonderry to Portadown, families that lost everything in Mariupol or fled shelling in Mykolaiv or the Donetsk region have found love, generosity and a home away from home with sponsoring families in PCI. Please keep praying for Ukraine.
Rev Alister Torrens and his wife Sarah are missionaries to Ukraine with ITEM. Alister is the principal of the Evangelical Reformed Seminary of Ukraine (ERSU) in Kyiv (https://seminary.ersu.org/en/) and is ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America. He grew up in Moneydig Presbyterian Church, which the family attends when in Northern Ireland. Alister leads a bi-weekly Bible study for Ukrainian refugees in NI and can be contacted at alistert@gmail.com
