Ukraine's believers and Putin
Moscow increased harassment and intimidation, with torture and killings
Pastor Sergey Perkhalskiy made sure to convert his Christian Hope Church in Kyiv to a bomb shelter before quitting the capital last week. He faced a tough choice: stay with his congregation or leave to protect his family, including his elderly parents. Either way, he says, “we overcome fear by helping each other.” Mr. Perkhalskiy’s church is Pentecostal. Like many Protestant clergy, he knows today’s trauma is a foretaste of tomorrow’s wreckage should Vladimir Putin conquer Ukraine.
Protestant churches have proliferated by the hundreds since Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In recent years, however, Moscow operatives have steadily increased their harassment and intimidation tactics against these congregations. The results: church properties seized, clergy tortured and killed….see my article in the Wall Street Journal.
Ukrainian pastor works with teenagers reinforcing a bomb shelter (PHOTO: ALEKSEY FILIPPOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES)
Welcome to a new installation of Globe Trot! I launched this newsletter 10 years ago as an editor and international reporter at World Magazine. Now you’ll find it in your email box again and on Substack. It’s an exploration of global news from my perspective as a Christian journalist for more than 25 years, designed to inform and to form community. Together we’ll say with Dawson Trotman, “When you can’t see very far ahead, go ahead as far as you can see.”
Ukraine: On Friday evening President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed via satellite link from Kyiv thousands who gathered in Eastern European cities to support Ukraine’s fight for survival against Russian forces. Here are clips from Prague and Tbilisi.
Russian forces are advancing in the south, and overnight Ukrainians braced for “massive loss of human life.”
Interesting, now that Apple has pulled out of Russia, Apple Maps shows Crimea as part of Ukraine again.
My Twitter list for Ukraine is here.
Here’s more on how prominent Christians have made common cause with the Kremlin leading up to the Ukraine invasion. Last year, as Russian forces amassed at the Ukrainian border, Franklin Graham met for 2 hours with a U.S.-sanctioned member of Putin’s inner circle, Vyacheslav Volodin. This report has more.
“It’s a misunderstanding that Putin’s antiliberalism is aligned with Christian beliefs. His Christianity is a mythology and flawed in substance,” former Ukraine finance minister Natalie Jaresko told me.
Moldova: In an email, Bishop Victor Pavlovski of Moldova’s Pentecostal Union told supporters his daughter Olga and her family had vacated their apartment to move in with him so that Ukrainian refugees could live in her place. Across tiny Moldova, about the size of Maryland with a population of 2.6 million, churches are finding ways to care for more than 100,000 refugees arriving from Ukraine.
Pakistan: At least 56 people are dead and nearly 200 wounded after a suicide bomb tore through a Shiite mosque in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The blast, claimed by Islamic State, was the deadliest attack in the country since 2018.
Afghanistan: The Kabul University student below is one of 11 profiles I received this week from a long-time source who is tracking Afghans kidnapped and disappeared. Ilham was a law student, kidnapped from his house on Feb. 8 and found dead Feb. 9 on a main road in District 22. Another targeted Afghan I’ve been tracking, a widely known local journalist, is living in a one-room safe house with his wife, who is pregnant, and two children. They face food and medicine shortages and have a son with anemia. The journalist cannot go outside due to threats against him. Now six months in to a Taliban takeover, I hope to bring more reports on what Afghans face.
When in ...
Hyderabad, India—don’t miss the work of the Sivananda Rehabilitation Home, which has been treating and sheltering lepers for 60 years.
At Globe Trot we celebrate the dignity of men, women, boys and girls made in the image of God. Their works in this life—whether art, science, health, politics, humanities or industry—become therefore important. This energizes our global engagement every day despite tribulation, famine, danger and sword. As an early American Puritan said, “The very wheelbarrow is to be with respect looked upon."
So excited to see you on Substack! I read and listened to your journalism on World for years, and read We Are Infidels. This is the PERFECT forum for you, and I'll now pick up where we left off when you left World. Fantastic!
Happy to have you back, your reporting is terrific.