Unstoppable Good
The Church of the Victors has finally left Druzhkivka after their building was bombed. Their sister church in Sloviansk has been destroyed as well. So they've pooled resources and are still working.
Alexander, pastor of the Church of the Victors in Druzhkivka, showed me around his battered town back in March, when that was a dangerous but not automatically fatal thing to do. Five days later he was hit by a drone, blinding him in one eye. The original stories are here. At the time I and one kind reader sent him a few hundred pounds to support the church’s programme of cooking hot meals for Druzhkivka’s remaining inhabitants every Saturday.
Last week I contacted Alexander to send a further donation and ask for an update about his church. He explained that the church has finally left Druzhkivka. He himself was told by doctors that if he remains in the combat zone he could lose his remaining eye because of the dust, dirt, noise and stress.
Alexander: “We remained for a while, but a glide bomb landed nearby and all the reinforced doors of the church were blown out. The office was destroyed. At that point, I called people and said I had no right to hold meetings, conduct services, or receive people any more because, just imagine if, God forbid, there was incoming and people were there.
Also, gas supplies were recently shut off in Druzhkivka. We had been coping because we cooked using gas cylinders, but those were no longer delivered. There is no electricity, no gas, no communications and no water. We used to get water from another church but it closed too because drones struck civilian vehicles that were coming to collect it. As for lighting a fire and cooking over wood, the smoke rises and a drone immediately appears.”
“We coordinated with all the volunteers and, in the end, I was the last person to leave. […] We might have remained longer but the FPV drone activity has increased many times over. The slightest movement anywhere, even if you were travelling by bicycle, there would be buzzing overhead. A drone would be above you. […] I left for treatment and left my vehicle with the team so it could continue serving in Donbas.”
Where can help best be directed now?
Alexander: “There is another church very similar to ours, in Sloviansk, that is also helping people. I just called Vitaly Stanislavovych [the pastor] and he said ‘Our building has been bombed – a huge building that belonged to us – but we haven’t stopped. We continue delivering water to people, distributing food, and working. There’s an enormous amount of work to do in Sloviansk. Drones are flying around, glide bombs continue to strike us. To be honest, we’re struggling to keep up with everything, and there is never enough of anything.’”
Clearly it was time to talk to Vitaly, or to send him questions as I’m currently in London.
Thanks to Jude Ellison for proofreading this post.
Vitaly has been a pastor at the Sloviansk Church of the Victors for 28 years, and the place saw plenty of trouble even before the full-scale invasion in 2022. When Sloviansk was briefly occupied by Russian-backed separatists in 2014, the church’s spiritual life and programme of outreach to families in difficult circumstances was thrown into chaos.
Vitaly: “Life turned upside down. There were no authorities. Power and weapons were in the hands of, let’s say, the socially irresponsible. People with drug and alcohol addictions, criminals, they were all armed. There were more checkpoints than rubbish bins in the city! And you were stopped at every checkpoint, your car was searched, your documents checked. They insulted and humiliated you. There was looting, cars and property were seized. Absolutely unimaginable chaos.”
The entire congregation evacuated to the Kyiv region in May 2014.
Vitaly: “Only a handful of people remained here, mostly elderly. We tried to support them and send food supplies because the city was isolated. No electricity, water or gas. One could say we were ‘liberated’ from everything [by Russia]! But God was merciful and in early July the city was liberated [by Ukraine] and it was possible to return. At that time there was nowhere near the level of destruction that the full-scale war would later bring. From July onward we restored about eighty percent of our ministries and activities. However, life had changed, and refugees and displaced persons became a new category of people within our city. We had our own facilities so the city administration and social services asked us to accommodate refugees from cities that later came under occupation.”
And that was before the real trouble began.
Vitaly: February 2022 was of course another huge turning point in our lives, in the life of the country and of the Ukrainian people. Tragic and terrible. I can’t describe it… Bitter, painful, frightening.
In March 2022 a lot of refugees from Izium, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk and many other places passed through Sloviansk. Volunteers brought them to the church and we became a transit centre. It wasn’t like 2014. People were terrified. They’d lost their homes and everything they owned at a single stroke. Many arrived without belongings, wearing only dressing gowns, with cats and dogs under their arms. Mothers arrived with little children, and many had not a single bag with them.
We received more than seventy people a day and organised hot meals, showers and overnight accommodation. In the morning, minibuses would arrive and take them to the railway station where evacuation trains transported them to safer regions of Ukraine. It was a cold winter and the bedding did not even have time to dry before new people arrived. Eventually we simply placed them on mattresses because the bedding couldn’t dry in time.
On 6 April we decided to evacuate our community, our church and our team. We stopped receiving refugees and became refugees ourselves. Then in summer 2022, two missiles struck the church building, destroying the third floor and part of the second floor. We organised repair work remotely, temporary roofing so that rain and snow would not destroy the building completely. In December, we returned to Sloviansk and our ministry, because we wanted to serve our own people in our own church.
There’s certainly been no reduction in the challenges! We have to adjust our work on a daily basis. We work with socially vulnerable groups: elderly people, people with disabilities. We have continued supporting families in difficult life circumstances, but at present this issue is less relevant because most children have been evacuated from Sloviansk. We assist refugees, including a lot of elderly people. Many have relocated here from places like Kostiantynivka, which have been destroyed by the Russian army.
These people – and maybe we too – hope for a miracle and believe they will be able to return to their homes one day. So they don’t want to move far away. Many thousands of such families and have settled in our city and together with the Department of Social Protection, we try, whenever possible, to support them every month with food supplies, hygiene products, and social and psychological support sessions.
In 2023, thanks to the assistance of our partners at Samaritan’s Purse we were able to build and equip a water purification station at the church. It worked around the clock, and residents of our neighbourhood and adjacent districts could come and collect water free of charge. Many filtration facilities and pumping stations have been destroyed, leaving entire areas without water.
We have two church minibuses, and we have equipped them with two-tonne water tanks to deliver water around the clock. We have significant need for support in this area, particularly for the maintenance of the minibuses. Many of the roads are damaged, or completely destroyed, and it’s very difficult to transport tonnes of water. And we’re struggling with fuel costs because of the global fuel crisis. Yet in some settlements there is no water at all.
We established the church itself as a support centre […] but on 27 January 2026, the Russian occupiers struck it directly with two glide bombs. The building was completely destroyed, along with the water purification centre and adjacent facilities. The only things that survived were the vehicles.
But no matter how much the enemy destroys our buildings our churches, our homes and our freedom, we don’t give up. Instead, we work harder. Our thanks to the city authorities who provided us with a building that was no less suitable than our own, and perhaps in a better location. All our work has continued. We now collect water from a partner church and deliver it to people who have no other way to get it.
The situation in Sloviansk is extremely tense, dangerous and difficult, for obvious reasons. The front line is now only 14 km away in some places. Glide bombs, drones and other attacks have been terrorising us for four years, and recently shelling has increased significantly. The city authorities, military and police urge people to evacuate, and we recommend that too. But for now our team remains here to help people by providing water, food, hygiene supplies, food and clothing. Government institutions, banks, and medical facilities are still operating in the city, so we’re not here alone. Everyone is working together to sustain life here.
What kind of support do you most need?
Even a kind word is meaningful to us. We can’t accomplish what we do on our own, especially as ninety per cent of the church members are now scattered abroad and in the large cities. We never refuse to give food assistance. The people who come to us are primarily pensioners living on very small pensions that are just not enough to cover basic necessities. Hygiene products are a daily necessity. Clothing and footwear are always requested as well. Adult nappies and hygiene pads as there are many bedridden people who require daily care.
Now the hot weather has arrived, water is an especially pressing issue. In winter and the chilly spring, if we transported two tonnes of water, there might be fifty litres left over. Now our tanks are completely empty by the end of each delivery.
Another major expense is maintaining our two minibuses. We are still unable to reach all the settlements in need. Previously, when we had two drivers, we were able to serve eleven settlements a week. Now we have only one driver, who works without days off, and we are able to reach only seven settlements.
In addition, because of the recent events in Iran, the price of diesel fuel has nearly doubled. As a result, we are really struggling in this area. We ask for your assistance – we are grateful and welcome any support.
Donations can be made to the work of Sloviansk Church of the Victors via PayPal. Search for serafymahlinko@gmail.com (Serafyma Hlinko). Select ‘Friends and family’ and use the reference, ‘Humanitarian work’.
If you can’t afford to donate, maybe drop them a kind word in the comments section below.
What incredible work they do - sending much love to them and we all hope that they will live under peaceful skies again
Thank you Anna. I will try to make a donation. Feeding people has always been the main theme of my donations. But please extend to these brave Christians my admiration and prayers.