Still waiting for peace

When Will Fleeson traveled to Ukraine in February, for his second reporting trip in as many years, I hoped he might arrive in time to cover the end of the war. While that story still waits to be written, Will focused his efforts on covering the war’s ongoing effect on Ukraine and its people. You can read his latest story, “Steal, kill, destroy” in this issue, about Russian persecution of Christians. After he returned home, I asked him to reflect on this latest trip.

How has Ukraine changed since 2023, when you last visited? People are tired of the war. It’s visible on people’s faces, the sense of fatigue and exhaustion and saturation. The other, more subtle thing is that there’s been a noticeable increase in the amount of Ukrainian language spoken, versus Russian. That’s a process that was evolving prior to the start of the war and has really accelerated since then. There’s a sometimes reductive idea that to speak Russian is to be less than Ukrainian, or not be Ukrainian enough.

How else has the war taken its toll on the Ukrainian people? When air raids sound, some people take shelter. Some people ignore the sirens and alerts completely. That wasn’t so much the case three years ago, and certainly not when I was there two years ago. This is one of the ways that people are sick of the war: They choose to ignore what is so disruptive. And there’s obviously a danger. The signals mean there are rockets or drones or both coming your way, which could kill you. And yet, people are determined to keep on living.

What about Ukraine’s churches? Leaders say they see a lot of new faces in their churches, people who have real life-and-death questions. That opens up a way to share the gospel. You could say the war has humbled them to ask those questions, whereas before, life was more comfortable and sure. People didn’t feel their need for God, or their need of a promise for better things, either in this life or the afterlife.

Does Kyiv look like a city at war? There’s a strange juxtaposition between a seemingly peaceful set of surroundings and all the trappings of war: men and women in uniform all over the city; sandbags in windows; tank traps on the corners of many streets and intersections. That said, often the sun is shining. Women walk around with flowers. People are still going to work, going to appointments, going to coffee shops.

For you, Ukraine is more than just a place in the headlines. What do you love so much about it? It’s a very young country in many ways. It was Soviet until 34 years ago. So in generational terms, you know, people my age were born as Soviet citizens, and people born shortly after that were born as independent Ukrainian citizens. So there’s a real sense of motion and transition, and history in the making. The long, rolling waves of historical trends are happening now in Ukraine, in ways that are easy to see and observe and study. And it makes for very stimulating conversations and reporting material. Beyond that, the food is really great!