Faith at the front

Darkness still shrouded the streets of Kyiv as Alexey Derkach began making his rounds to collect volunteers for the day’s mission. Most intersections he drove past contained some combination of tank traps, sandbags, and barbed wire. Every once in a while he passed street-level maps that once helped Ukrainians navigate their capital. For more than a year, they’ve been scratched out or painted over—all part of the effort to slow down a potential Russian advance.

At each stop on Derkach’s route, members of Word of Truth Bible Church piled into the back of the gray-colored van. Black lettering covered both its sides. One sticker said “Chaplain” and showed a cross and a sword with the Greek letters alpha and omega. The other bore the words “Humanitarian Aid” printed in Ukrainian script. Photographer Viacheslav Ratynski and I joined at the last stop, squeezing into the already-full space. The church volunteers struggled to rearrange the trove of cargo stuffed against the back seats.

With the team finally settled, Derkach headed east, across the wide Dnieper River, toward the front.

Since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine in February 2022, Derkach and other church members have taken humanitarian aid to Ukrainian soldiers deployed along the country’s front lines. The pastor, who by day oversees a window installation business, acts as lead organizer of the church’s frequent trips to bring food, supplies, and even tactical gear to Ukraine’s often under-provisioned armed forces.

Derkach helped launch the ministry last year, after ­realizing Ukrainian soldiers lacked such basic equipment as bulletproof vests. He and other Christians in Kyiv developed a do-­it-­yourself production site, made more than 1,500 vests, and distributed them free of charge to soldiers and combat-­zone aid workers. The ministry paired each vest with a free Bible.

Despite the life-and-death urgency of protecting Ukrainians in dangerous places, Derkach remains focused on evangelism. The bulletproof-vest production has since slowed down, but the church’s mission at the front continues.

“The highest priority in this ministry is to tell people the gospel,” Derkach said. “Since a soldier may die today or tomorrow, we feel a great responsibility before God to tell them the most important thing.”

Outside the city, the highway cuts through massive, rolling fields of rapeseed, wheat, and other crops. They blazed with yellow blooms against an electric-blue sky. It’s more than just pretty countryside: Ukraine’s national flag is modeled after just such a horizon, with a yellow band below and a blue band above. The country has used the flag since 1848 and adopted it officially in 1992, less than a year after declaring independence from a then-­crumbling Soviet Union.

Ukraine joined the Soviet Union as a socialist republic in 1922. Ten years later, despite its breadbasket status, Ukraine suffered a massive famine that killed millions, during a time known as the Holodomor—Ukrainian for “death by hunger.” Through a deliberate policy of genocide, Josef Stalin aimed to starve Ukrainians, earn millions selling their crops for export, and bring the restive nation more firmly into Moscow’s grip.

Last year, exactly a century after Ukraine became a Soviet republic, Russia moved again to subjugate the country by lethal means. The current war did not begin in 2022 but expanded from a smaller-scale, slow-burning occupation of Ukrainian territories, specifically the southern peninsula of Crimea and parts of the eastern Donetsk Basin, or Donbas, which Russia seized and has held since 2014. Ukrainians refer to the current conflict as “full-scale war,” a term heard daily on the streets of Kyiv.

Ukraine’s road to independence and stable borders is both long and, given Russia’s new belligerence, unfinished. All of that painful history endures in the memories of today’s Ukrainians, who say they are fighting to resist a return to Russian domination.

Derkach describes the fight in spiritual terms. The war means “evil, pain, suffering, the death of innocent children, fathers and mothers and elderly people,” he said. “When we see this evil, we understand even more how big and terrible sin is.”

THREE HOURS AFTER leaving Kyiv, Derkach eased the van off the main road and bumped downhill along a dirt track. A soldier wearing camouflage and plastic house slippers waved to us from the bottom of the slope. Derkach rolled toward a stand of trees and past a sign that read “Danger! Mines!” Ukrainian forces planted the land mines to stymie the advance of Russian military vehicles if they tried to avoid Ukrainian resistance by veering from the main road.

Derkach parked the van, and we piled out. The soldier who greeted us—a fellow church member who goes by the nom de guerre “Blacksmith”—traded hugs and handshakes and then led us through the trees into the camp. Considering how close we were to the fighting, this corner of the front felt deceptively calm. It reminded me of a scouting exercise.

A large pot hung over a crackling, open campfire. Socks and underwear dried on a line. A hatchet lay near a stump amid wood chips, ready to chop more firewood. Blacksmith had begun to cook a huge rice pilaf for the men and their guests. On one side of the camp stood the bunkhouse, built partly underground, with 10 cramped bunks and a rack for service rifles. Tailing the group was the camp dog. It, too, had a war name: Little Bullet.

Above ground stood a combination kitchen-bathroom-­dining room. Children’s drawings in crayon and marker, showing Ukrainian flags and armored vehicles, covered the walls. Outside, trenches ran in crooked lines everywhere. The soldiers built them that way on purpose, to limit damage from exploding Russian ordnance. The church volunteers took a brief trench tour, noting the gun nests, the wood-plank reinforcements, and the leafy coverage placed overhead to avoid Russian surveillance. Beyond the tree line lay the minefield and the main road, heading east—the direction from which any Russian advance would come.

The unit had returned in recent weeks from some of the hottest conflict zones in the war: Bakhmut, recently taken by Russian forces, as well as Kostiantynivka, in the neighboring Kharkiv region. When the commander told Derkach that none of his men had died in those engagements, the pastor responded with a simple “Slava Bogu”—Ukrainian for “Praise God.”

Most members of the unit are in their 20s and 30s. Before the war, one worked as a foreman, another as a firefighter. One was a salesman of children’s toys. If their backgrounds and walks of life differed in peacetime, they held common motivations to fight: to protect their families, their country, their independence.

Blacksmith joined the Ukrainian army last April, following the immediate chaos of the February invasion. His gray hair belies his 27 years, but he is not the only soldier the war has aged. He and his wife have a daughter, born four years ago in a more peaceful Ukraine.

“Who, if not me?” he asked, telling me about his decision to serve. “When my daughter grows up and asks what I was doing during this war, I will say, ‘I served when they needed me.’ If I couldn’t say that, I’d be ashamed.”

Blacksmith’s wife, a Christian believer, pleaded with him to repent before deploying. “I can’t,” he told her then. He wasn’t ready. Others at Word of Truth, including senior ­pastor Gela Chargheishvili, likewise urged him to repent. He eventually did, and today Blacksmith considers himself a Christian.

His faith has given him an assurance not all of his fellow soldiers can claim.

“God will protect me,” Blacksmith said. “I’m sure He’ll bring me back.”

Another soldier, a 34-year-old called “Artist,” also joined up last April. His brothers were serving, and he also wanted to do his part. But he admits active combat is a trial.

“I’d be a fool not to be afraid,” he said.

Artist wants the war to be over, but only if it means a Ukrainian victory: “There is no other outcome.”

Whatever the cost of victory, Artist and Ukrainians like him seem willing to pay. He said he is determined to serve for as long as it takes to end, and win, the war.

A soldier called “Bratukha”—a Ukrainian diminutive for “brother,” and closer to the American slang “bro”—recalled fighting in Bakhmut and elsewhere: “You’re only scared later.”

The tall, affable 38-year-old has two children, ages 6 and 9, and said they are proud, and scared, for their father. Their drawings hang inside the camp kitchen. Bratukha’s wife is “proud and worried,” he said.

Why did he join the fight? “Because I want my kids to live in freedom. Myself, too, of course. And in peace. We didn’t want this war. We didn’t start it. We’re defending ourselves from Russian attacks.”

The 37-year-old unit commander, who was wounded in Bakhmut, also has a wife and a 7-year-old son. They attend Word of Truth without him. The commander thinks about his family constantly while he’s away. The weight of responsibility—for his loved ones, and for the men who entrust their lives to his leadership—lies heavy over his face.

“No wife wants her husband to go to war,” he said.

Thinking about his own reasons for serving, he showed a modesty characteristic of many soldiers defending Ukrainian lines.

“I don’t go around shouting, ‘I’m a hero!’ I went to war because we had to,” he said. “Without freedom, we’d be slaves.”

In Bakhmut and other conflicts, the commander felt a divine protection preceded them. His words rang with descriptions from Deuteronomy, in which God used Moses to deliver the Israelites from a long history of Egyptian abuses: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15).

He said of their time in Bakhmut, “It’s as if God was leading us by the hand.”

AFTER LUNCH, the soldiers and volunteers gathered for worship. They sang three songs, and Derkach began to preach from Luke 17, focusing on the account of Jesus cleansing 10 lepers. Derkach warned the soldiers not to pray like the nine lepers who, seeing themselves freed from strife, quickly forgot the source of their blessing. Once out of physical danger, too many soldiers forget the God who chose to extend their days on earth, he said. After surviving deployment to places like Bakhmut, they should honor God by showing gratitude, and even repentance.

Ending the sermon time with a quick prayer, Derkach then led a time of accountability for the group. He asked them if and how often they read their Bibles. In a moment that pastors around the world would recognize, the soldiers gave various mumbled responses.

Derkach was quick to show grace. “Thank you for your honesty,” he said.

After a final prayer, the men joined together to unload the van. The boxes began to rise on a camp bench. They contained quick-serve versions of basic supplies: instant coffee and tea, instant mashed potatoes, cans of soup and stewed vegetables, and tomato sauce. Another box held items with a more sentimental value: a cache of socks, all hand-knit by Ukrainian women from Chernihiv. They had tied each pair together with two lengths of string—one blue, one yellow.

After more conversation and a final prayer, Derkach and the volunteers piled back into the van. They had one last stop to make in another town to gather more supplies for future trips. Derkach rolled slowly up the dirt track toward the main road. The van passed the tree stand where the soldiers camped, beyond the warning about land mines, and up to the asphalt. The glorious yellow fields and blue sky spread out before us. The scene was peaceful, and the war seemed far away.

AN HOUR DOWN THE HIGHWAY, we drove past a sign that made Derkach stop and turn around to take a closer look. The sign, written in Russian, was meant for the country’s unwelcome foreign visitors. Using a pejorative term for the Russian people, the sign’s message followed with, “Welcome to hell!”

Such an outcome was exactly what Derkach and other Christian volunteers kept busy preaching about: that the war can, at any time, separate believers from unbelievers, the ­living from the dead, for eternity.

“The war has not changed the meaning of the gospel,” Derkach told me later. “It has only showed how important it is to preach the gospel, because people are going to hell every day.”

On the outskirts of a small town in the Chernihiv region, Derkach pulled into a concrete loading zone, where a team of local volunteers stood sorting supplies. The barnlike space held volumes: canned food, electric generators, boots and galoshes, and boxes upon boxes of American military surplus. Backpacks with pixelated camouflage, stamped with “U.S.” in bold black letters, lay in piles around the room. A Ukrainian and a U.S. flag hung side by side. Other parcels looked as if they had just arrived from American aid groups and donors: Several white containers bore the mark of North Carolina–based Samaritan’s Purse. Cardboard boxes with the words “Costco” and “U-Haul” stood in abundance.

The Word of Truth volunteers worked briskly, stacking the camo backpacks inside the van above packs of New Testaments in Ukrainian. I marveled at how far the supplies had traveled. While the volunteers finished, Derkach traded notes with the local organizers.

As the sun faded near the horizon, we jumped into the van and pushed ahead. The day had been fruitful, and long. Only well after dark would we cross the Dnieper River again. Derkach and his team prayed that the road would lead to ­victory. And to peace.

—William Fleeson is a writer and journalist currently based in Kyiv. His work has appeared in BBC Travel, National Geographic, and Newsweek.