157 Days of War

Update from Buddy, missionary, on July 30

We have finished five months of war in Ukraine, 157 days today. The counting of days is not important, but it somehow gives us a gauge as to where we are. The counting of lives lost or injured, and families displaced and broken forever, is a different gauge and more important, but I don’t think anyone will ever have a correct number for that. And so we continue on.

I have shown you and wrote to you a lot about the devastation, especially in the areas around Bucha and Irpin. One of the things that you should know is that even as the war is in progress, the people are beginning to build again. In the midst of uncertainty, life must go on and there must be some thought about the future. If not people lose hope. While 7 million refugees have left, 35 million have stayed. The hope among all Ukrainians is that those who left, (the vast majority being women and children), will return and build a new Ukraine. Even as the war is going on we are thinking about ways that we can work together with the people and the Ukrainian churches to help rebuild their lives. It will entail many aspects and many areas of service, but I want you to be thinking and praying with us about how we can do that together. It has been encouraging to me to see the churches at work in the communities around Ukraine, and even within the war zones of Kharkiv, Donbas region, Mariupol, Mykalaiv, and Odesa. It has been even more heartening to be a link between people and Churches from home to stand with them. At this time, it is good that we can partner together and strengthen them in the areas which are most needful. It is how the church should and must work if we are to make a difference in the world. The church should be on the front. I am including some photos again of the Irpin region and also of Pastor Stanislav who we are partnering together with to help restore the homes and lives of people who have lost so much there.

This week we are sending a new shipment of aid into the Vinnitsa region. This trip everything from this shipment will stay in that region. You will remember that just a few days ago that area was bombed. Many refugees live in that region and we have been helping to take care of them since the beginning of the war. Pasha and Vitallic will be leaving on Monday to again go into Donbas region to replenish the area there that we are working with and to bring out as many people as are ready to leave again.

There is good news from Kherson that the Ukrainian troops are slowly, but surely, retaking occupied areas in that city. They have already taken back several surrounding villages and are little by little pushing back. This will be a major encouragement for the Ukrainian people. Keep in mind, that it is the intent of the Ukrainians to restore all their land as it was even before 2014.

From time to time someone will write to me and ask if any of the television news about the war is reliable. The short answer is - not really. Every news source seems to have its bias and paints it own picture of what’s going on. Of course Russian news is total propaganda of a type we can only marvel at. In America, we have our own propaganda from left and right and if you’re not alert and wise and sift everything through what you know to be principle and your own brain, you’ll be taken. If you dig deep, you can find sources online that are more reliable than others. Maybe you have found some? If you have, maybe send the link to me and I’ll check it out and if they are, I’ll share them with others. If all I had to watch was network broadcasts for my source of information, then I would not rely on any of it. However, of all of those, I have found the closest to honest reporting are BBC and Aljazeera. I AM NOT ENDORSING THOSE CHANNELS, I am simply saying that they seem to be closer to reporting news as it is in Ukraine than others. (Or it may be because they report it with a British accent.) For news about inside Russia, you might want to look at Meduza and Moscow Times online. Both are in English and will give a interesting veiw from Russian writers or people who have lived in Russia for a long time.

Continued thanks for every continued thought and prayer.