How did Christian faith survive decades of Soviet repression? And how did Protestant churches become part of Ukraine’s religious landscape?

Two new illustrated sequences for The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith explore these questions. Through painted scenes, historical maps, and narration, they provide background to the churches and people we meet in the documentary.

Last week, we shared the ancient tradition of the Apostle Andrew’s journey to Kyiv, the baptism of Kyivan Rus’ in 988, and the Great Schism of 1054. This week, we move closer to the experiences that shaped the generations living in Ukraine today.

Communism, Stalin, and the Survival of Faith
​For Ukraine’s Christians, Soviet rule brought sustained pressure to abandon religious belief and practice. State-sponsored atheism reached into schools, public life, and the institutions through which faith had been passed from one generation to the next. The intensity of repression varied over time, but its consequences reached far beyond any single period or denomination.

This sequence examines that history, including Stalin’s repression and the persistence of religious life underground. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church offers one striking example: after its forced suppression, clergy and laypeople continued worship in private homes, preserved religious communities, and taught children in secret.

​What interests me as a filmmaker is the human connection across those years. Behind the churches we visit today are families who kept praying, believers who took risks, and traditions that survived because someone continued to pass them on.

Protestants in Ukraine
Protestant pastors and congregations feature prominently in our footage from Ukraine. Understanding their place in the country’s history adds another dimension to their stories.

This second sequence follows Protestantism from the Reformation into Ukrainian lands, through the development of Baptist and Pentecostal communities, Soviet persecution, and the opportunities that followed independence. These churches have roots extending well before the end of the Soviet Union; Baptist communities, for example, developed in Ukraine during the nineteenth century.

That background helps connect the history to the pastors and congregations we filmed in Kyiv, Bucha, Irpin, and beyond. Their experiences of faith, perseverance, and service belong within the broader story of Ukrainian Christianity.

Bringing the history into the film
These short sequences give viewers a chance to step back from the interviews and wartime footage and understand more of what came before. The painted illustrations help us tell stories from periods our cameras could never reach.

Together, the two pieces explore a question running through the documentary: how is faith carried forward when the institutions and communities that sustain it come under extraordinary pressure?

We look forward to sharing more at our preview of The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith on Sunday, November 8, at noon, following Liturgy, in the parish house at Christ the King Ukrainian Catholic Church in Boston. An online preview will also be available at that time.

We’re bringing Ukraine’s Christian roots to the screen through animation in The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith.
As we develop the film, we are exploring how to bring that history into a film rooted in the lives, faith, and resilience of Ukrainians today.

Ahead of our November 8 work-in-progress preview at Christ the King Ukrainian Catholic Church in Boston, we’re sharing three short animated sequences. Together, they trace a journey from the Apostle Andrew’s ministry in the first century to the baptism of Kyivan Rus’ in 988 and the Great Schism traditionally dated to 1054.

“St. Andrew: From Galilee to Kyiv” — 1 minute, 30 seconds
Our journey begins with the Apostle Andrew and the ancient tradition connecting his first-century ministry with the land that would become Ukraine. According to that tradition, Andrew traveled to the hills above the Dnipro, blessed the land, and foretold that a great Christian city would one day rise there.

​The sequence follows that sacred journey from Galilee toward the future Kyiv, introducing a story that has held a lasting place in Ukraine’s Christian imagination. It provides the opening thread for the history explored in our next two pieces.

​“988: The Baptism of Kyivan Rus’” — 1 minute, 36 seconds
Nearly a thousand years later, a ruling family’s choices helped shape a civilization. Princess Olha embraced Christianity before her grandson Volodymyr, but her conversion did not immediately change the beliefs of her people—or even her own son.

​It was Volodymyr’s later embrace of Byzantine Christianity, and the baptism of Kyiv’s people in the Dnipro in 988, that became the defining turning point. Christianity spread gradually, but the foundations were being laid for a religious and cultural inheritance that would shape worship, art, architecture, and daily life for centuries.

​“1054: The Great Schism” — 2 minutes
Our third sequence widens the view from Kyiv to Rome and Constantinople.

To understand that division, we begin centuries earlier, when Constantine established Constantinople as his new imperial capital in 330. The Eastern Empire continued from there after imperial rule in the West collapsed. In Rome, the pope’s spiritual standing increasingly came with civic responsibilities, while the church in Constantinople developed alongside a continuing imperial government.

​Over time, differences in language, custom, theology, and understandings of authority widened the distance between the two centers. The confrontation of 1054 became a defining symbol of that estrangement, although the separation unfolded over generations. From this long process emerged the division between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches—two traditions sharing a Christian inheritance, with Kyiv deeply rooted in its Eastern expression.

​Together, these videos offer an early look at how we are bringing such history to the screen. They are working placeholders within the larger film, rather than finished, standalone short films. Their artwork, narration, pacing, and place in the story remain part of the filmmaking process.

The current foundation of The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith is a 60-minute condensation of our three documentaries: Trek to Bucha, Back to Bucha, and Beyond Bucha. Those films follow people and communities we encountered during Russia’s full-scale invasion. As we develop the broader film, historical sequences like these will help connect those contemporary experiences with the long and sometimes complicated story of Christianity in Ukraine.

We invite you to watch these early pieces and join us as the film takes shape.

Our preview screening will take place Sunday, November 8, 2026, at noon, following the Divine Liturgy, in the parish house at Christ the King Ukrainian Catholic Church in Boston. We will also make the work-in-progress preview available online at that time for everyone to watch. Whether you join us in Boston or watch from home, we welcome your thoughts as we continue shaping the film.

​Learn more about the film at christiansofukraine.org.

On August 24, Ukraine celebrates the 35th anniversary of its independence.

For most Americans, Ukrainian independence is understood in political terms: freedom from Moscow, national sovereignty, democratic government, and the right of Ukrainians to determine their own future.

But after several years of traveling through Ukraine and talking with pastors, priests and believers, I have come to understand another freedom that independence restored — freedom of religion.

Religious liberty is one of our oldest and most cherished principles. We debate prayer in schools, religious expression in public places, the rights of churches and the proper separation of church and state.

What surprised me in Ukraine was hearing Christian leaders talk about these same issues and, in some cases, tell me they believe they enjoy greater freedom to practice their faith publicly than Christians in America.

Pastor Anton Kalyuzhny, the younger Kalyuzhny and son of New Life Church’s founder and senior bishop, Anatoliy Kalyuzhny, spoke proudly about Ukrainians’ ability to pray in schools and public settings, telling me they have “absolute freedom.” Bishop Sergey Gashchenko in Zaporizhzhia made a similar point, contrasting the freedom his churches enjoy with restrictions he sees elsewhere.

Fr. Roman Nebozhuk, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest in Kyiv who also teaches and helps prepare military chaplains at Taras Shevchenko National University, is especially proud of Ukraine’s ecumenical culture and the way different faiths have learned to work together openly. One important expression of that is the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which brings Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders together. Public prayer is common at national events, clergy are visible in civic life, and military chaplains serve openly alongside soldiers.

Even during COVID, the pastors I spoke with remembered their churches continuing their ministries. Unlike in parts of the United States, where government orders prohibited or sharply restricted in-person worship, the Ukrainian churches they described were never forced to close.

To understand why this matters so much, we have to remember what came before.

Under Soviet communism, atheism was official state ideology. Under Stalin, churches were destroyed or confiscated, clergy were imprisoned and killed, religious education was suppressed and entire churches — including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — were driven underground.

For generations of Ukrainians, the state did not simply separate itself from religion. It tried to control, marginalize and sometimes eradicate it.

Independence in 1991 changed that.

And that history helps explain something I heard repeatedly while filming Beyond Bucha: many Ukrainians believe freedom of religion is one of the things they are fighting to preserve today.

Pastor Anton spoke about what it meant to live without freedom under Soviet domination. His message was stark: Ukrainians know what that life was like, and they will not return to it. The sentiment I heard was essentially this: better to risk everything for freedom than go back to living like a slave — a conviction not far removed from New Hampshire’s famous motto, “Live Free or Die.”

In Zaporizhzhia, that conviction became intensely personal.

Bishop Gashchenko ministers only a couple dozen miles from the fighting. When we spoke, two of his sons were serving on the front lines. His churches help people fleeing Russian-occupied territory while feeding families, caring for displaced people, ministering to soldiers and preaching the Gospel.

To him, defending Ukraine and defending the freedom to practice his faith are not separate ideas.

U.S. and United Nations reporting documents Russian occupation authorities banning or restricting Protestant churches and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, seizing houses of worship, detaining religious leaders and imposing Russian religious laws on occupied territory.

Protestants have been particularly vulnerable. Pastors have been abducted and imprisoned, evangelical churches confiscated or repurposed, and Protestant religious leaders killed. Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests have been detained, tortured or driven from their parishes. Orthodox Christians outside Moscow-controlled structures have also faced severe restrictions.

The contrast is hard to miss.

On one side of the front, Ukrainians pray publicly, worship freely and participate openly in the religious life of their communities.

On the other, an occupying power increasingly decides which churches may exist and under whose authority they may operate.

Perhaps that is why the Christians I met near the front struck me as so courageous. They stay in threatened cities. They feed people. They rescue families. They pray with soldiers. They comfort the grieving. And in places surrounded by the darkness of war, they bring the light of Christ.

That story runs through Beyond Bucha and now through our new film, The Christians of Ukraine.

Thirty-five years after independence, Ukrainians are still defending the right to determine their own future.
And for many of the Christians we have met, one of the freedoms worth defending is very simple:

The freedom to worship God without Moscow — or anyone else — telling them they cannot.

We are pleased to announce a new documentary project from TheoEco:
The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith

Along with this announcement, we are also launching a new project page and sharing two preview reels that offer an early look at the film now in development.

Built from three documentary journeys across wartime Ukraine — Trek to Bucha, Back to Bucha, and Beyond Bucha — The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith is a feature-length documentary planned for release in 2027.

The project begins with the reality of the present war, but it reaches much further back.

The Christians we encountered in Bucha, Irpin, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kyiv, and elsewhere are living out a faith whose roots did not begin in February 2022. Its story reaches back through the ancient tradition of St. Andrew’s first-century journey to these lands and to 988, when Prince Volodymyr baptized Kyivan Rus’ — more than a century before Moscow first appears in the historical record.

That is the larger story this film seeks to tell.

The three original films together ran nearly three hours and 45 minutes. We have already distilled that material into an approximately 60-minute cut containing the strongest stories, people, and moments from those journeys.

It is a film we could release today.

But our goal is to make it all that it can be.

The completed documentary will expand into a feature-length film of approximately 90 minutes, adding the historical, visual, and interpretive elements that will help Western audiences understand not only what they are seeing, but why it matters.

Those additions will include:

• animated sequences
• expert interviews
• maps and graphics
• historical imagery and context
• explanatory material on Ukraine’s Christian history and traditions

​In other words, the heart of the film is already there. What comes next is the work of deepening it, clarifying it, and placing the present war within the much longer story of 2,000 years of faith.

Watch the Reels
We are also pleased to share two early video previews of the project:

Preliminary Trailer — Under 3 Minutes
A brief introduction to the film and the world it enters.

​15-Minute Reel
A deeper look at the people, places, and faith at the center of the documentary.

Learn More
Visit the new project page here:
Read the Full Story

Support the Film
Support will help us complete the full feature-length version of The Christians of Ukraine: 2000 Years of Faith — including the animations, interviews, graphics, and historical materials that will allow this story to be told as fully and as powerfully as it deserves.

Support the Film
​
If this is a story you want told well, we invite you to follow the project and help bring it to completion.

ChristiansOfUkraine.org

​By Steve Richards
With assistance from ChatGPT

​Tragedy and hope—just like Christ on the cross.Four years ago, in April 2022, I found myself in Bucha, Ukraine—just weeks after the world first began to understand what had happened there. It was my first trip into the country after the invasion, and nothing could have fully prepared me for what I encountered.

Easter that year looked nothing like what I was used to.

Instead of a familiar church service or a family brunch, I spent the day in a cold parking lot beside an apartment building, gathered around a makeshift field kitchen. A group of us cooked chicken soup over an open fire—rain, sleet, even a bit of snow falling around us. The power had only just been restored after nearly two months. The meal took hours to prepare and fed more than a dozen people. I remember peeling potatoes, trying in some small way to be useful.
 

​What struck me most, though, was that it wasn’t even Easter for most Ukrainians yet.

As part of the Orthodox tradition, they were observing Palm Sunday. There were no palm branches—just small budding twigs, a quiet symbol of life beginning again. Their Easter would come next Sunday, marked by a midnight service I watched on a small screen in a darkened train station somewhere between Kyiv and Lviv.

​But my Easter—that year—was in Bucha.

At the church the world had come to recognize.

Near the ground where mass graves had been dug.

The evidence of what had happened there was everywhere—not distant or abstract, but deeply personal. I met people who had lived through it, people like Igor, an insurance agent who had been bound and blindfolded in his own apartment, then later struck by shrapnel from an armored personnel carrier before eventually being evacuated. He told his story simply, sitting in the very apartment where it had all occurred.

​It’s hard to describe what that does to you.

I’ve included here a short, four-minute video excerpt from Trek to Bucha—the first film I created from that journey in April 2022. It captures some of what I witnessed in those early days, and the reality on the ground as the world was just beginning to understand.

Now, four years later, I find myself reflecting on Bucha in a different way.

The town is no longer what it was in those early days. There has been rebuilding. Streets have come back to life. Churches are filled again. But nothing has been forgotten—and the war itself is not over. For the people of Ukraine, this is not history. It is still their present.

And yet, what stays with me most from that Easter is not only the tragedy—but the hope I saw alongside it.
Not a distant or idealized hope, but something very real. The kind that shows up in small acts: sharing a meal, welcoming a stranger, gathering to worship, choosing—day by day—to rebuild.

That’s something I’ve seen on every trip since.

So this Easter, I find myself returning to a simple idea: tragedy and hope—the cross, and what comes after.

If you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll take the time to watch this short excerpt. It offers a window into a moment when the lights came back on—and into a place that continues to shape everything that has followed.

Thank you, as always, for following this journey and for caring about the people and stories behind it. 

​Easter in Bucha video - April 2022 (4 minutes) 

​By Steve Richards
With assistance from ChatGPT

On January 7, I wrote to a friend of mine in Kyiv, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, simply to check in. I knew he was facing brain surgery, and I wanted to be sure I was praying on the right day.

I’ve been thinking about you and wondering when your surgical procedure is going to happen. Want to be sure I add into the chorus of prayers on that day and after… and before.

A few days later, he replied calmly, almost matter-of-factly. He would see his doctor the following week; a decision would be made then. He promised to keep me informed.

On January 15, the update arrived.

The doctors had made their decision. His surgery was scheduled for January 27. His Church would cover most of the expenses. So far, so good.

Then came the reality behind the reassurance.

The situation in Kyiv, he wrote, was becoming increasingly dangerous. Electricity, water, and heat were being disrupted more severely than at almost any point since the beginning of the war. Even hospitals were losing power. Lights were being turned off in places where surgeries are performed.

I replied with encouragement—and perhaps a touch of gallows humor—hoping that someone might have flashlights on hand if the power failed.

Later that night, another message arrived.

​It was already past midnight in Kyiv. He wasn’t sleeping—not because of anxiety about surgery, but because of an air alert. A missile attack was possible.

And then, almost in passing, he wrote words that stopped me cold:

“We pray – we work – we pray again – and the Lord gives us strength.”

No dramatics. No complaint. Just a sentence that captured daily life under constant threat—faith woven into endurance.

I asked if I might quote it.

His reply came not with words, but with an image: a thermometer reading –20°C. The temperature outside—and not much warmer inside Kyiv homes.

Of course, he wrote.

This is what resilience looks like.

Not speeches. Not slogans. Just prayer, work, prayer again—under air-raid sirens, amid blackouts, in freezing apartments, with brain surgery scheduled in a city at war.

It is a reminder that faith, at its most authentic, is not loud. It is steady. It shows up. And somehow, impossibly, it keeps going.
Moments like this are why I continue to return to Ukraine with a camera and a notebook—why Beyond Bucha exists at all. Not to capture destruction alone, but to bear witness to lives lived faithfully in its shadow, where prayer and perseverance are not abstractions, but daily necessities.

Please keep Fr. Roman—and Kyiv—in your prayers on January 27, and in the days before and after.

This past Sunday, January 4th, I attended the Divine Liturgy at St. Jonah Orthodox Church in Spring, Texas, just a few days before Orthodox Christmas, which this year falls today, January 7th.

While much of the Christian world has already dismantled nativity scenes and returned to ordinary time, this small Orthodox parish north of Houston was still moving toward Christmas. That sense of being out of sync—celebrating later, differently, and largely unnoticed—felt emblematic of Orthodoxy’s place within the broader American religious landscape.

St. Jonah’s describes itself as an English-language parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), a body formed by clergy and faithful who fled Bolshevik Russia and lived for decades apart from the Moscow Patriarchate. The parish itself began as a small mission community and gradually took shape as families gathered around a shared commitment to Orthodox life in English. That lineage matters. It situates St. Jonah’s within a Russian Orthodox tradition shaped by exile, memory, and distance from state power—even as contemporary geopolitics complicate those inherited narratives.

The 9:00 a.m. liturgy lasted nearly two hours, all of it standing. At least seven clergy in full vestments participated, processing through a modest sanctuary with deliberate precision. The service was conducted in English, yet much of it remained difficult to follow. Orthodox worship does not aim for clarity in the modern evangelical sense; it seeks immersion. Scripture, chant, incense, and ritual blended into a sung, Eucharist-centered liturgy anchored by a disciplined, well-rehearsed choir. This was not a sermon-driven service; it demanded patience and submission to form.

The congregation numbered roughly one hundred or so. Many women wore headscarves, and several families presented an aesthetic that felt closer to Mormon communities than to either mainline Protestantism or American evangelicalism. This was not a political gathering.

The pastor, John Whiteford, offered a brief sermon on Matthew 1:1–25, the genealogy and birth of Christ. Whiteford joined the parish after converting to Orthodoxy in the early 1990s and has been associated with St. Jonah’s for decades. Online, he is a controversial figure, known for sharp critiques of Western culture, outspoken political commentary, and unapologetic Orthodoxy. In person, however, the sermon was restrained and textual. Whatever controversies surround his public persona, they were not evident from the pulpit that morning.

That gap between digital reputation and physical reality matters. Whiteford’s online profile is often amplified by a broader phenomenon sometimes labeled the “ortho-bro” movement—young men drawn to Orthodoxy less through parish life than through social media, podcasts, and culture-war aesthetics. Online, that world can feel loud, combative, and far larger than life. Inside St. Jonah’s on a Sunday morning, there was little evidence of it. What existed here was not a movement, but a parish—small, multigenerational, and decidedly ordinary.

What is often overlooked in discussions about Whiteford is his religious background. He was raised in the Church of the Nazarene before converting to Orthodoxy. That detail resonated personally; I, too, was raised Nazarene in my childhood years. The Nazarene Church is an evangelical denomination widely regarded as socially and theologically conservative Christian tradition that stresses moral discipline and visibly lived faith.

This visit also connects directly to the work I’ve been doing on Beyond Bucha, which examines faith communities in Ukraine as they navigate war, occupation, and ecclesial fracture. In Ukraine, Orthodoxy is not a niche tradition; it is the religious majority, embedded in national identity and daily life under fire. The tensions playing out throughout Ukraine now echo—quietly and imperfectly—even in places like Spring, Texas.

​Orthodox Christmas in Spring, Texas arrived without spectacle. No cameras, no slogans, no audience beyond those who stood there that morning. What remained was a small community practicing an old faith—and quietly collecting support for Ukraine, directed toward the historic Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the network of parishes traditionally recognized within global Orthodoxy and long embedded in Ukrainian religious life. In an age shaped by amplification and outrage, that modest act offered a reminder that some of the most meaningful responses to global crises unfold far from the noise, where conviction is measured less by volume than by presence.

By Steve Richards

The other day, an Evangelical leader in the Southwest said something that stopped me cold.

I’d heard it before—but it still made my stomach turn. He claimed Vladimir Putin was somehow a defender of Christianity, a champion of “traditional values” standing up to a godless Ukraine and its supposedly secular president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The idea would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

It’s easy to see why some find that claim seductive. In an age of moral drift, many believers crave firm spiritual leadership and a culture that still honors faith. But this narrative—crafted and amplified for years by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill—is not a defense of Christianity; it’s a weaponized lie. It hijacks the language of faith to mask imperial ambition and seduce well-meaning Christians in the West—all while Russian forces kill Protestant pastors, level churches, and fill churchyards with mass graves, as in Bucha.

The truth is, Ukraine has been a cornerstone of Christianity for over a millennium. It embraced the faith in 988 AD under Prince Volodymyr—when Moscow was still a swamp. Across Ukraine, church domes crown every skyline; shrines and crosses stand proudly in public squares. Schools welcome prayer. Faith shapes daily life. From Lviv to Kharkiv, the church isn’t a relic of the past—it’s the living heart of the nation.

Russia’s record on religion tells a darker truth. After 1917, Lenin and Stalin waged open war on faith itself. “Militant atheism” became state doctrine. The so-called League of the Militant Godless spread its gospel of disbelief through schools and propaganda, hunting down believers of every kind—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist. Churches, mosques, synagogues—boarded up or destroyed. Priests and pastors hauled off, shot, or left to freeze in the gulag. By the late 1930s, faith in Russia survived only underground, whispered in fear.

When Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, Stalin suddenly discovered his “faith.” Not out of belief—out of desperation. He resurrected the Russian Orthodox Church, not to worship God, but to weaponize Him—turning priests into mouthpieces for the state under the iron grip of the NKVD, later the KGB. Other faiths remained crushed beneath the boot. In 1946, he outlawed the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, jailing its priests and forcing its flock into Moscow’s fold. Protestants and Jews were surveilled, harassed, and driven underground. Stalin didn’t spare Orthodoxy; he enslaved it—using a hollowed-out religion as camouflage for tyranny while extinguishing real spiritual life across the Soviet empire.

For forty years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church survived only by miracle. Its clergy met in cellars, kitchens, and forest clearings—whispering the liturgy, baptizing in secret, burying their dead by night. Faith became an act of resistance. Only in the late 1980s, under glasnost and perestroika—and with the bold encouragement of Pope John Paul II—did the Church rise again, a resurrection after four decades in the catacombs. Protestants, too, endured in the shadows. In Kyiv and beyond, pastors still speak of grandfathers who were jailed, beaten, or vanished simply for preaching the gospel.

Since independence in 1991, religious freedom in Ukraine has flourished. I’ve interviewed Pentecostal, Charismatic, Presbyterian, Catholic, Evangelical, Baptist, and even Orthodox pastors across the country—none feel persecuted. They laugh at the notion; it’s pure Russian disinformation.

Meanwhile, Putin and Patriarch Kirill parade as defenders of Christianity—but only their own, state-approved brand of it: a weaponized Russian Orthodoxy chained to the Kremlin. Every other expression of faith is treated as a threat. Protestant and Evangelical churches are smeared as “sects” or “cults.” Even Ukraine’s own Orthodox Church is punished simply for breaking free from Moscow’s grip. In Putin’s empire, faith isn’t sacred—it’s scripted.

The bottom line couldn’t be clearer: Ukraine lives religious freedom. Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim—all free, all respected, all thriving side by side. It’s not propaganda; it’s reality. And it’s one of the very freedoms Ukrainians are bleeding to defend. Even priests of the Russian Orthodox Church are free to hold mass in Ukraine so long as they don’t engage in espionage or act as tools of Russian propaganda.

Good luck finding that in Russia—or anywhere under its boot. That’s not propaganda. It’s witness—the living faith of people who refuse to bow, even as bombs fall and churches burn.

Ukraine marks its 34th Independence Day today, Sunday, August 24, 2025.

On this day in 1991, the Ukrainian parliament declared independence from the Soviet Union — a decisive step that helped bring the USSR crashing down. Ever since, war criminal Vladimir Putin has seethed, calling the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” His lament exposes his imperial ambitions and his refusal to accept Ukraine’s right to exist as a free and sovereign nation.

No doubt the same sinking feeling Santa Anna had when Texas bolted in 1836 — or King George when his colonies slipped away in 1776. But I digress.

I know a bit about Texas, as I travel there often. Both my sisters moved there long ago, and all my nieces and nephews were born there. Just recently I was in Dallas helping my 87-year-old mother settle into a lovely assisted living facility near my sister. Christmas in Texas has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember. I truly love the place. Fittingly, the first draft of this piece was written while visiting Texas megachurches last summer, with the idea taking shape at the Alamo in San Antonio — itself once a church.

When I do Q&A after screenings of my Ukrainian documentaries, I often compare Ukraine to Texas. For Americans, especially Texans, this analogy offers a clear framework for understanding Ukraine’s fight for freedom.

First off, Ukraine and Texas are roughly the same size (Texas covers about 268,600 square miles, Ukraine about 233,000). And here’s another surprise: In 2024, Russia’s nominal GDP is estimated at about $2.1 trillion, while Texas’ real GDP is roughly $2.2 trillion. Russia may look enormous on a map, but in terms of economic power it’s no bigger than a single U.S. state—a reminder that appearances can be deceiving.

Their struggles for independence as sovereign republics are strikingly parallel. Texas won its freedom from Mexico in 1836 before joining the United States in 1845. Ukraine declared independence in 1991, confirmed by more than 90 percent of its people in a national referendum, and has defended that sovereignty ever since.

The principle is timeless: it doesn’t matter who once claimed the land. What matters is the people’s right to a government that protects their liberty. As our Founders wrote in 1776:

Ukraine, after centuries of attempts to erase its culture, simply seeks to raise its children in its own homes, land, and traditions. That is why so many mothers have returned home despite the threat of missiles and drones.

Like Texas, Ukraine is defined by conservative values: family, faith, and freedom. Evangelical life thrives there. During my five-week tour in the fall of 2024, I visited many churches and interviewed pastors for my new documentary Beyond Bucha. An evangelical from Texas would feel right at home in Lviv, Kyiv, or Kharkiv. I even met one in 2023 — Pastor Doug Shepherd from Dallas — leading a church in Lviv. Prayer is welcome in schools and public spaces, and churches remained open through COVID. Religious freedom in Ukraine is not only alive, it is flourishing.

Despite constant missile and drone strikes, Ukrainians refuse to be intimidated. Predictions of Russia’s inevitable victory have proven as hollow as Mexico’s claim over Texas or Britain’s attempt to retake America in 1812.

In 2022, the world braced for Kyiv’s fall. Instead, Ukrainian soldiers armed with U.S.-supplied Javelins forced Russia to retreat. The atrocities at Bucha became Ukraine’s Alamo — where defiance met brutality and inspired lasting courage. The Javelin itself has deep Texas roots: originally developed by Texas Instruments in Denton/Lewisville (now part of Raytheon) with Martin Marietta, and still built in part in Dallas, where DRS Technologies produces the infrared assemblies that power its Command Launch Unit.

Traveling across Ukraine in 2024 and again this summer, I found a nation remarkably resilient. Shopping malls, grocery stores, restaurants, even its vast rail network all function under bombardment. Life goes on. Borders may shift, but Ukraine endures.

Just as Texas sought U.S. statehood in 1845, Ukraine seeks integration with Europe today. Like Texas, it is blessed with beautiful cities, vast lands, and proud, resilient people. These are natural allies who share our values — and our determination to be free.

This is not only about Ukraine. It is about us. Imagine if American leaders saw Ukraine not as a burden but as an opportunity: a partner in freedom, a place where American investment and ideals can flourish. Any president who helps secure Ukraine’s freedom would be remembered not only as a statesman, but as a champion of liberty itself.

Ukraine’s fight is America’s fight — for freedom, family, and the future of democracy itself. Texans said it best: Don’t Mess With Texas.

​Today the call is just as clear: Don’t Mess With Ukraine.

This weekend we screened Beyond Bucha at the Cossack Museum and the Cathedral of the Nativity Orthodox Church in Odesa to packed audiences.

I arrived in Odesa on Friday and am staying at the summer home of Viktoriia and Sasha, just outside the city—away from the all-too-frequent sirens and explosions of Russian drones and missiles. Here, in a house surrounded by an extensive garden, life feels tranquil and worlds away from the war.

Viktoriia organized the weekend’s events, beginning with Saturday’s screening at the Ukrainian Cossacks Development History Museum—a small museum recently damaged in a drone strike. A hole in the roof and several shattered windows remain as reminders that this museum, like Ukraine itself, has been built and rebuilt after repeated destruction.

Korovai Presentation at the Ukrainian Cossacks Development History Museum

The festivities began with the presentation of a Korovai—a traditional Ukrainian celebratory bread—by singers in traditional Ukrainian garb. They sang their hearts out in a joyful performance that moved me to tears. I could only wish that my Ukrainian-American friends and supporters could have witnessed the passion with which they performed several Ukrainian folk songs accompanied by guitar. I will never forget the love and appreciation I felt from this group for making the journey and for making the film.

Next came a performance by the award-winning Sunrise Flute Ensemble, which is featured in the film. These talented young performers played several pieces, including Moon River by Henry Mancini—bringing more tears to my eyes. Considering the hell these children endure on a daily basis, their resilience—and that of their teachers and parents—is nothing short of extraordinary. That they continue to focus on school and extra-curriculars like this, and made it to an early afternoon performance on a Saturday, is a testament to their strength and community.

Beyond Bucha Odesa Premiere - Moon River and The Nightfall by the Sunrise Ensemble of Odesa

The film screening was met with an engaged and thoughtful audience, many of whom stayed afterward for a Q&A session—and to share the Korovai. Most were intrigued by the views of Ukrainian cities that few get to see, and by the evangelical faith practices, which were unfamiliar to them. As Orthodox believers of the Ukrainian tradition, they were already well aware of the Transfiguration Cathedral and its Moscow Patriarchate ties. Some questioned why it was included in the film—until I explained how it became well known in the U.S. after being struck by a missile in 2023.

The day continued with a tour of the museum and a fun moment where they dressed me in authentic Cossack attire. It was truly an unforgettable day.

Today, we held a second screening—this time at the Cathedral of the Nativity, a Ukrainian Orthodox church featured in the film, which was also struck by a Russian drone in November 2024.

Much of the Orthodox congregation squeezed into the parish hall following the Sunday service (which lasts several hours). Once again, they were immersed in the film’s journey through evangelical churches and cities—from Bucha to Kharkiv to Zaporizhzhia—and remained engaged as the story unfolded. The Ukrainian subtitles did their job; I was relieved and happy to see that everyone seemed to follow along.

I wasn’t entirely sure how an Orthodox audience would respond, but I needn’t have worried. Fr. Orobets, who was interviewed in the film, had already seen it and was the one who invited us to screen it here. He was glad not only to see churches and believers from across Ukraine but also to give his parishioners a glimpse of life outside Odesa.

In the end, the reception couldn’t have been warmer.

​My deep thanks to Viktoriia, who organized both events, and also to 13-year-old Sasha, who not only translated Fr. Orobets' interview in the film but also served as my interpreter at both events. It would have been next to impossible to be here without them—and without their husband and father, who has been redeployed to the front lines. He remains constantly on all of our minds.