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S&U interviews

War & peace

30 March 2023

5 min read

After the anniversary

Ukrainian musician Lyuba Reznichenko reflects on the war’s anniversary and on the aid given in so many ways. Interview by Peter Robertson.

Peter Robertson

Peter Robertson is Christian Aid's senior humanitarian journalist.

A woman sits on a chair in a field holding a large stringed musical instrument.

Lyuba Reznichenko playing her bandura.

Christian Aid.

Christian Aid first met Lyuba Reznichenko in July 2022 after the then-25-year-old had fled her home, and her studies at the music academy in Dnipro, for a remote village in western Ukraine. She was sharing a bungalow with three families, including a friend from her church in Dnipro.

Her parents, brother and three sisters were still in Kherson, under Russian occupation - they were safe but Lyuba could not get to them. She spoke about her worries and said she missed playing music but was enjoying the nature around her.

I caught up with Lyuba, in Lviv, via a Zoom interview. She updated us on the liberation of Kherson but explained her parents were under constant shelling from the Russians.

Lyuba plays the bandura – the national instrument of Ukraine. Her father advised her to take her bandura with her when she escaped, so if she ended up with nothing, she could still busk. She has since staged performances in Lviv city centre to raise people’s spirits and talked about how emotional people get: “They all want peace and victory,” she said.

She also spoke about her faith, the work she has been doing helping refugees and the support she received from Christian Aid’s partner, Hungarian Interchurch Aid.

Lyuba said when she looks back at the past year, she gets frustrated:

“It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.”

What was your life like before the war?

I was studying at the Music Academy in Dnipro. Before that, I went to see my parents in Kherson during the New Year holidays… I was planning to go visit them again in March, but 24 Feb changed everything. I was in Dnipro and my entire family was in Kherson.

What did you feel when you learnt about the Russian invasion on 24 Feb?

Like the majority of Ukrainians, I started getting phone calls at 4am from my friends who were saying: “get up, the war has started.” It was horrible, I was very scared as we heard the first air raids and explosions. Horror is the only thing I remember about that day.

What happened next?

I stayed in Dnipro until mid-March. To avoid plunging into panic and depression and as a believer, I will be honest with you, I prayed a lot. I do believe that God supports, protects and helps. The church I used to go to opened a centre for the first wave of refugees from Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya regions. As my own family was in the area under occupation and I could not do anything to help them, I decided to start helping those refugees.

Then I learnt of an opportunity to evacuate to western Ukraine in March, I grabbed it. This is how I ended up in Transcarpathian Region.

What’s your experience of interaction with Christian Aid?

I stayed with a very kind and hospitable family in a village there. They have many children and helped other refugees and I helped them every time I could. Then, in May I learnt of the Hungarian charity HIA, Christian Aid partner, and registered with them…

They supported me financially. As a student, I did not have any means. I could not ask my parents for helps as they were living under occupation and banks did not work there…

How did you stay in touch with your family?

It was a very difficult situation. There have been protracted periods, like a week, two weeks and a half, when I could not get in touch with them as there was no phone connection, no internet in Kherson. I was horrified by the news I read: a strike here, an explosion there. I was thinking about my family all the time.

But there were moments when I could reach them on a chat app. The connection was bad, but still, and when you hear the voice of your nearest and dearest, that’s a great relief…

How is your family now?

Kherson was liberated on 11 November… But then the situation only deteriorated because the Russians were shelling it from the right bank almost non-stop. My parents tell me that it is going on almost without interruptions.

When did you move to Lviv and return to Dnipro?

At the end of August, I moved to Lviv where I met other believers who were actively involved in charity work. I worked with them, too. We staged performances in the city centre. I played bandura and sang patriotic songs to raise people’s morale.

Then I returned to Dnipro to complete my studies… I continued cooperation with this organisation there… We were quite active there, too. We toured the region with performances, I played bandura a lot.

What is people’s reaction to your performances?

The reaction is abundant. People do react to my songs. They cry, too. They become very emotional. They all want peace and victory.

What do you feel about the first anniversary of the war?

It is all very difficult. When it all started, there was hope that it would end in a week or two. And then a month passed, another… Still there was hope that it will just come to an end.

When I look back at the year, I just become frustrated. It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.

What do you think about the UK charity organisations helping Ukrainians?

First, I want to thank you from the bottom of heart for supporting us all this time. This is an awful situation and many Ukrainians need help. Especially those living in eastern Ukraine, in hot spots, which have seen fierce fighting, the newly liberated territories where people have no place to live, where they lost loved one… Those people need more support.

I would like to say that more aid is directed there. Still, it is impossible to live there. It is not safe at all because of the non-stop raids and explosions. Those people who evacuated to the west of Ukraine need help. But they sometimes cannot get it because all the attention is focused on the east.

So if you can it would be good to distribute all the assistance among those staying in the east and those who moved here, to the west.

Events

Identity

Politics

S&U interviews

29 April 2024

4 min read

June 3: Esau McCaulley and Graham Tomlin - get tickets now

Join us in London as we explore today's cultural moments.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A man talks to a camera with his hands together palms up and his finger interlaced.

Esau McCaulley on the Re-enchanting podcast.

Meet Esau and us

Seen and Unseen is hosting an incredibly rare event: Bishop Graham Tomlin in Conversation with Esau McCaulley on 3rd June, at St Mellitus College, 24 Collingham Road, Earl’s Court, London starting at 7.30pm .

As well as hearing more of Esau’s story, this conversation will cover the place of faith in public life, the significance of the black church, US politics, and this cultural moment. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this. I have had a couple of conversations with Esau McCaulley, and they have re-arranged the theological air I breathe.

You can find out more about Esau on his web site and read his New York Times columns. Or listen to my interview with him, as part of our Re-enchanting podcast. 

Places will be limited, get further details and reserve your (free) ticket on Eventbrite.

Belle Tindall writes...

How does one wrestle their faith out of the hands of those who used it as tool to enslave them? How does one keep hold of such a faith when the owner of the local plantation was also the pastor of the local Presbyterian church? When the people who filled the pews were also the people who turned up to the KKK rallies? And how do the descendants of those people wade through the cultural and spiritual residue of such a history? Wrestling, still, with the complex evil that defined their ancestors' days?

And how does one respond when Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate, endorses a God Bless America Bible as some kind political strategy? What does one do when their community are being peddled their own sacred book, this particular edition of which includes the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics of a country song also entitled God Bless the USA? Oh, it also has the American flag emblazoned across the front. For good measure, I suppose.

And finally, how does one look out at an increasingly secular culture and remain confident that what it really needs is to be reminded of an ancient Galilean carpenter, as if he’s still some kind of relevant solution to our deepest hopes and fears?

These questions have something in common: they have been, and are continuing to be, answered by Esau McCaulley.

Answered honestly.

Answered powerfully.

Answered ever so publicly.

Last year, Esau was named by the Washington Post as one of the most influential faith leaders in the USA. He is a New York Times contributor and a New Testament Professor at Wheaton College, he is also the author of the award-winning Reading While Black and his latest best-selling memoir, How Far to the Promised Land? What began as a eulogy for Esau’s (rather complicated) father became ‘one black family’s story of hope and survival in the American south’. The eulogy was unapologetically complex, and so is this book. It was unwaveringly honest, and so is this book. It was utterly profound, and so is this book.

Esau, when reflecting on his own history, stretches for truth, refusing to relax into comfortable simplicities or false binaries that don’t belong in reality. Writing this memoir cost Esau something. You can tell. The grace woven into the paragraphs did not come cheap.

This book, as Esau himself explains, is about his father, but his father is a metaphor for America. And so, when it comes to this book (and much of Esau’s work), the political makes its home within the personal; the story that Esau tells is, to an extent, a trojan horse. A challenging commentary of America is sitting within this book’s pages. Esau is clear, his father – who continued to leave a trail of trauma in his wake – made bad decisions. But society played a significant role in creating the context within which those decisions were made. Were the poor decisions his father made down to personal responsibility or was it structural injustice? Esau’s answer? ‘Yes’.

Again, he has an aversion to binaries that don’t belong in reality.

To borrow an Elizabeth Oldfield phrase that I cannot stop thinking about: this book tells us something of our brokenness and our ‘breaking-things-ness’. And, as Esau writes,

‘patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God’

And Esau seems to have a lot of patience. Patience with himself, patience with his father, patience with Rev. Matthew Bone, owner of the Bone planation where his ancestors were enslaved, patience with those who have hurt him, patience with us all.

And that, it seems to me, has bred a persistence in hope. Real, gritty, bruised and yet still beating, joy-filled hope. The kind of hope that can look at the God Bless America Bible and not face-palm. The kind of hope that can research the links between Christianity and slavery and not fall into spiritual crisis. The kind that can observe the theory that faith is losing its place in public life and can use a New York Times column to prove it wrong.

Ultimately, the kind of hope that the world is increasingly paying attention to.