On the Ground in Ukraine

Sunday morning, June 16, 2024. Two dogs, Molly and Linda, lounge on the covered patio of Nazaret House in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, as I eat a breakfast of fried eggs, ham and cheese, roasted vegetables, and sourdough bread with two pastor friends, one Polish, one Ukrainian. As breakfast winds down, children from the neighborhood’s high-rise apartments start coming through the gate. By the time church begins, twenty or more have gathered at Nazaret for Sunday School. The congregation I preach to is mostly under ten years old. Outside Sunday morning, Nazaret offers after-school tutoring, two annual day camps, an annual campout in the mountains above Ivano-Frankivsk, and financial assistance to poor families. Seventy-five children take part in some aspect of the program.

Many are victims of the war. Some are from internally displaced families who moved west after the Russians invaded. My Polish friend points to a chubby ten-year-old with glasses and a Spiderman backpack, smiling as he shows off his walkie-talkies to his friends. He’s the son of a pastor who moved his family from the east when his son began to have recurring nightmares. Other children have lost parents—fathers to the war, mothers to despair and alcohol—and are being raised by grandparents, with help from Nazaret House.

As we drove from Krakow, Poland, to Ivano-Frankivsk the previous day, my Polish friend recounted the disastrous course of the war. Ukraine no longer has time to train soldiers. A year ago, an elder at one of our churches, a gifted classical guitarist, received six months of training before being deployed. Recent recruits are sent to the front with only two weeks of preparation, hardly enough to learn how their weapons work much less to cultivate the instincts of a warrior. Inexperienced soldiers get killed, and the young men in the next deployment receive even less training. When the war first started, men volunteered in droves. No longer. Young Ukrainians know they’re likely to end up as fodder and try to avoid conscription. Young people who want to go to college have to update their draft information before applying, and many decide to forego school rather than risk being drafted. Some take roundabout routes when traveling to avoid checkpoints where, rumor has it, they can get drafted right off the street. A man married to a disabled woman is automatically exempt from the draft, which—rumor again—has created a market of disabled women offering themselves as wives, for a fee. 

Millions have fled the country or moved to a new home, many thousands are dead, infrastructure is badly damaged. Women and children escape to Poland or Germany while their husbands fight or try to keep their lives together back home. When the war finally ends, Ukraine will be in ruins, but precious few Ukrainians will remain to put their world back together. Many survivors will be broken—injured or terrorized by battle, tempted to abuse alcohol. Husbands will be estranged from their wives, fathers from their children. Ukrainians have lost hope and fear the war is unwinnable. They wonder if anyone cares. My Polish friend said it will take a generation to rebuild. One of the pastors from Rivne says it will take two.

When people asked if I was afraid to go to Ukraine, I told them I was going to a western city that’s safe from Russian missiles. I was wrong. The airport at Ivano-Frankivsk was bombed on the first day of the war, and a major power plant near the city has been hit several times. Power outages and air raid sirens are common. 

Yet as we bounce along the potholed mountain backroads of Ukraine, the most remarkable feature of the landscape is its normalcy. Houses are as intact as they ever are in Ukraine, with flowers overflowing gates and doorsteps. Yards are mowed, and many houses have large vegetable gardens (a necessity). Girls walk along the road carrying cell phones and old men wobble along on bicycles. Every town is dominated by an Orthodox church, gold-plated domes flashing in the afternoon sun, and there is a small icon chapel every few miles. The eerie peace alarms me again as evening falls over our endless Sunday afternoon meal of Uzbek lamb soup, barbecue pork, fresh vegetables, Hungarian fish soup, and beer, beer, beer. Even when your bones are being picked over by an invader, life goes on, as it must. 

At dinner one evening, I sit with a pastor and his wife from the eastern city of Mykolaiv. Mykolaiv is among the most bombed cities in Ukraine. Schools have been closed since 2022, along with concert halls, museums, and theaters. The pastor has been hit with shrapnel, is losing sight in both eyes, and has other health problems, but he persists. More than half the city’s population abandoned the city when the war began, and the church was drastically reduced. Over the past two years, though, the church has tripled in size. Many are new members, gradually coming to believe what they say in the liturgy week after week. The Lord has rewarded their courageous faithfulness; in the most war-torn cities of Ukraine, he still makes himself known.

The uncanny sense of normalcy returns as we go out for an after-dinner gelato on my last evening. The apartment neighborhood is full of children riding bicycles or playing games; it has the safe and wholesome atmosphere of mid-century America. We order at a bustling delicatessen and sit outside under a canopy, as one of the pastors recounts the history of Ukrainian Reformed churches. It’s as peaceful an evening as I’ve had anywhere. As I board my homeward flight in Amsterdam, I get a text from my Polish friend telling me Ivano-Frankivsk was bombed the night after we left, damaging residences and a school. Despite appearances, life in Ukraine is anything but normal. For Ukrainians, the war is always there, always close.

Peter J. Leithart is president of Theopolis Institute. 

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Image by Igor Kosovych, provided by Wikimedia Commons, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.