A Ukrainian pastor based in Kyiv has told Premier Russia is waging a spiritual, as well as military battle, against his country.
Vadim Preobrazhenskiy is a director with Eurovision Ministries providing pastoral support and emergency aid to people across Ukraine.
The US and Germany have announced they will be sending top of the range tanks to help Ukraine fight off Russian aggression.
But Russia has retaliated by saying it is a ‘blatant provocation’ and this morning launched more missile strikes on the country.
Preobrazhenskiy said: “It’s impossible to get used to such missile attacks but unfortunately, Russia does it every week, or once every two weeks, depending on how fast they can renew their supplies of missiles.
“This is one of the reasons why we want to get more aid from the West, including military aid to protect our land and to prevent these attacks, which are happening on a regular basis.”
Preobrazhenskiy, who is director of EuroVision Ministries, says that a Russian narrative has been encouraged to convince people that the war is necessary to ‘de-satanize’ Ukraine: “There have been so many spiritual attacks and propaganda spread by Russian media and Russian officials and now even the deputy Chairman of the Council of Defence of Russia [Alexey Pavlov, Assistant Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation] has said that the next stage of the war against Ukraine will be against ‘satanization’. He said that churches which reject traditional Orthodox values - meaning the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine - reject traditional values and become sects.
“They call every church which is different from the Russian Orthodox Church ‘sects’. So right now Russian media is saying that Ukraine is occupied by satanic sects.”
But the pastor says the threats won’t dim the spiritual strength and hope of Christians in Ukraine:“We are very thankful to the Lord that in Ukraine, we still have absolute religious freedom. It is very precious to us, the churches are united and we have national days of prayer. Peace is the priority for Ukraine and we will do all we can as spiritual leaders to keep this precious atmosphere of unity.”