2nd July 2025

Ukraine has been much on our minds at Tyndale the past three years, as we have been helping Polish Baptists in Wraclow, and more recently the Red Cross, in getting material aid into Ukraine. The other day quite by chance Margaret and I met a young Ukrainian woman in Portishead, a refugee from the Donetsk region whose home had been completely destroyed in the Russian invasion. She said how much such aid was appreciated.

But an increasing concern for many, especially in the Ukrainian churches, is the need also to get certain items out of Ukraine. I’ve just been at a meeting of Trustees of the Keston Institute which continues the interest of Keston College, founded during the Cold War to study and publicise the situation of Christians and other peoples of faith in communist lands. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the situation of believers has of course in many ways changed. But at the Trustees’ meeting we heard about what is happening in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine (like Donetsk), and were alerted to one calamity in particular: the systematic seizure and destruction by the Russian military of any and all materials, archives and publications, which may express a belief that Ukraine is a sovereign entity and that its churches represent a living tradition distinct from control by Moscow and the present leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. So at Keston we are exploring ways of locating and rescuing such items and getting them into safe keeping while there is still time, or before, please God, the Russian occupation spreads still further. Prayers welcome.

Keith Clements