A Radstock commentator shares his latest thoughts on the crisis in Ukraine. The full article can be found here. Please read it to inform your prayers!

Donetsk... eastern Ukraine, August 1997... A UK Radstock-affiliated church has a team of nearly 30, mostly young people, serving a church in the city, participating in its outreach, visiting hospitals and orphanages, and sharing their faith - with the blessing, it has to be said, of the authorities there.

Donetsk... August 2014... No such team would gain access now, as the same city is the seat of a violent separatist insurgency, one in which hundreds have been killed and thousands injured. Churches like the one mentioned above are being persecuted and banned from meeting. Not many kilometres from the city, the conflict has been internationalised by the downing of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 with the loss of nearly 300 lives, including young children. Culprits unknown, with Ukrainian armed forces and Russian-backed fighters blaming each other, but the weight of evidence pointing to a catastrophic error by the latter.

17 years ago, hardly anyone outside the region had heard of Donetsk. Now, anyone with internet access or television knows about it. To see news pictures of shell damage and death where once there was a kind of harmony is quite something to say the very least. A sad turnaround. How did things come to such a pass? To trace the roots of that question, it is necessary to ask some fundamental questions of the participants in this tragic drama. This writer began to do so in his previous article on this crisis, which you can find here. For the latest analysis, please click on this link.

Gareth Davies

2nd September 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own, and do not reflect the opinion of the wider Radstock network or its member churches.