Mark Labberton: Today we have the privilege of receiving as our guest Fyodor Raichynets, who is a theologian and a pastor in Kyiv, Ukraine. We’re all aware that wars and rumours of wars exist all around the world, but certainly one of the places that has galvanized my own heart and mind—and probably many of yours—has been in Ukraine itself. Fyodor comes with an incredible list of accomplishments and contributions that he’s made over decades of service. He currently is the head of the department of theology at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses in leadership and biblical studies, focusing at times especially on the Gospel of Matthew. But he’s also been and is a local pastor, and he serves both in academic work, as much as that can be sustained under conditions of war, and in the context of serving on the front line and bringing supplies, medicines, food, and other things to people who are right in the middle of the battle every single day. He himself, as you will hear, is a person who carries this responsibility with depth and reflection, with humility, with anger, and with great love.
I hope this conversation today is as rightly convicting and disorienting to you as it was to me.
Welcome, Fyodor. It’s so great to have you here as a guest on Conversing.
Fyodor Raichynets: You are welcome, and I’m glad to be with you.
Mark Labberton: You’re speaking today from Kyiv. And I think maybe one way of grounding the conversation is for you to just tell us about today in Kyiv. What was your day? What was happening in Kyiv? What did you see, feel, hear?
Fyodor Raichynets: Well, we had a rough night last night. It was another attack on Kyiv—combined attack by ballistic rockets and drones. So I woke up in the middle of the night by the sounds of explosion somewhere not far from us. Then in the morning I woke up and I read news of the aftereffect of this rocket attack. And then the entire day we had, I would say, continuous alert of drones flying above us. And at the moment, as I talk to you, nothing has changed. But we have—we are in the midst of a very sophisticated war. So we have apps in our phones which monitors the exact movement of the drones above our heads, and actually, you know, when it is very near to you or when it is far from you.
After an intensive—we had a continuous air alert for seven days nonstop in the recent time. And because it has affected significantly our economy, our government decided after this very long air alert to have two different kinds of alerts. So now we have an alert marked by yellow colour, which means that this is just a drone attack, which means that we don’t have to rush into the bomb shelters. It means that we just have to be attentive where are these drones. And as you have probably read from the news, now Russians launch reactive drones, which means that it flies very high and it flies on a very high speed, so it is hard to monitor it, and it is even harder to shoot it down as the previous—we would call it ordinary—drones. So after that, they have decided to differentiate two different air alerts, which means yellow means drone. Red means that this is a ballistic rocket attack, which means that we have to stop any activity.
And I’m sitting in my office in the seminary, and we have at the moment dozens of students on campus, because we are in the middle of the session of the intensive courses. So I know that it sounds surreal, but we cannot stop our lives. We cannot stop our activities. We have to move on and live our lives.
It affects your life significantly, because as I go to bed at night, I pray this very Jewish prayer, very short, which Jesus prayed on the cross according to Luke’s version, which means that “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” And with these words on my lips I go to bed every night for last four and a half years. And yeah, I go to bed with the thoughts that I may not wake up in the morning, so I just make sure that my spirit is in his hand. And yes, whatever happens happens.
So there are different kinds of alerts in the recent months, and the attacks are almost nonstoppable. Which means that—well, I’ve described once in Amsterdam how do we feel in Ukraine. I said, just imagine two things that you cannot do for a longer period of time. You cannot plan anything ahead, because we’ve learned to plan with if: if things go well, if we don’t have another attack, if we survive, if we have electricity. In case, like in the previous times, whenever Miroslav Volf or Evan Rosa would call me and ask for another podcast, I would say, “Well, if things go well, if we have electricity, if we have internet connections, of course, we can do it.” And then this—so I jokingly put it that I have this planophobia in the recent years. So I’m even afraid to plan my life. But you know that you cannot do it without any planning. That’s the first thing.
And then the second thing is that there is no place, there is no time you feel secure. So there is this constant sense of insecurity that just haunts you, and it tires you off. It wears you off. So having no security place or time, having no chance to plan anything because it may go in all possible scenarios and trajectories—that’s how we feel. And that’s, emotionally, doesn’t make you feel okay, you know. It’s just horrible.
So my day today was exactly this way. We had to make sure that our students are safe, especially when we have red alerts—and we did have today red alerts. And we have to monitor, whenever we have yellow alerts, where are these drones? Are they above our heads? Are they above our location? And because they are reactive drones, they move very fast. So we just have to monitor how these drones are moving and in which direction they are moving. And in case they are near to us or they are above us, then we have to call for the end of session or call for the break in the session and make sure that our students are safe. So that is—yeah, that’s—
Mark Labberton: An average day in Kyiv.
Fyodor Raichynets: That’s an average day in Kyiv, unfortunately, these days. And unfortunately, that it became a normality for us. So the abnormal thing becomes a normality for us.
Mark Labberton: So I’m imagining even the most ordinary task, like, for example, you’re teaching intensives. You’re trying to concentrate, obviously, on the material that you’re trying to teach. Students are trying to pay attention to what it is the professor is saying. And meanwhile, as that’s happening, is there someone literally in the classroom or otherwise that is just doing nothing but monitoring as you do this work, so that people don’t have to be looking at their phones when you’re collected together? How does that work?
Fyodor Raichynets: No, we don’t have—well, do you see, that’s a challenge for me as a lecturer, whether I have to have students to be bothered by it or I have myself to be bothered and just keep a left eye on my phone in case there is a red button or a yellow button appears on your screen. And you are absolutely right, it does distract you. It doesn’t help you to stay focused on your topic. But with time being, I think we have gotten used to that kind of things. And yeah, I know it’s surreal, because as many friends we have from abroad, they cannot understand how we cope with such reality.
Mark Labberton: War is trauma. Just by definition, war is trauma. And in this case, it’s trauma that is new to warfare, namely because of drones, and therefore the sense that you are in some ways even more on edge because of the subtlety, sophistication, relative silence of the danger that is constantly stalking. So it’s a whole nation in trauma. Yeah. I mean, does that phrase [carry] weight? When I say that, and when you would potentially have said that, is that the right way to label it? Or how else would you label it? Is it trauma plus?
Fyodor Raichynets: I think that’s a very precise depiction of the reality on the ground here. I learned a nice way to define trauma: trauma emerges in a place where you find rescue and where, instead of security, you find insecurity. And because there is no such place in Ukraine nowadays, and for the last four years—I was just thinking how blessed we are that we don’t know the future. And this not knowing what is ahead of us keeps us going, in fact. Because from the day one, if someone would have told me that the war will last 1,600 and something days—well, I would not believe it, that’s for sure. Because now we have a war that lasts longer than the First World War, than the Second World War. And that into the 1,600 days, it would not get better, but it would get worse—I would not believe it. And I would probably quit.
Because from the day one, I was very resolute that I will stay and I will minister to the most vulnerable people. And since I’ve spent twelve years in the Balkans, and then I’ve been to—I coordinated a project, a peacebuilding project in conflict countries, in conflict situations. So I’m not new to war and I’m not new to the conflicts. But nevertheless, if someone would have told me what reality is ahead of us for the next four years, well—
You know what, in the Gospels, the word, um, temptation—and when you are tested or when you are probed, what is the word in English?
Mark Labberton: It’s tried.
Fyodor Raichynets: Yes. Jesus was led to the desert by the Spirit to be—and, well, he was tempted at the end, but first he was led in to be kind of probed or tested, you know. So I always say that when the tribulation takes long, they easily turn into temptation, you know, because you cannot keep going without the end. You know, you want to have—and that’s why we need a hope that someday these things will end. But because we didn’t know, here I am after all these days of war. I hope I’m in a good shape. I’m traumatized for sure. I admit that. I hope I’m still thinking, you know, properly and everything. But the war fatigue is very heavy on all of us.
Mark Labberton: Yeah. You mentioned hope. Obviously, it’s one of the great questions of the world, period, at almost any time throughout world history. But in Ukraine right now, in this moment, with what I would just call a madman in Russia who, in a very personalized way, is literally committing this cruelty against the Ukrainian people, there is literally a direct source and cause, as opposed to some wars where it just feels it’s a more general, generalized position. In this case, it feels like a very personal war. And I guess I’m wondering how knowing that, and knowing how protected his world is and so forth—does that make hope even harder than if it was a more diffuse source?
Fyodor Raichynets: Yes, yes. And it makes it harder, especially when you know how many people pray, how many people curse this person, how many people hope that a black swan—if you know this term from political science—will suddenly land on the Russian soil. Because, you know, I’m a person that travels abroad quite often. And whenever I meet people, you know, in Europe, in US, elsewhere, and they would come to me—and I know that they are sincere in their words and in their acts—and they would say, “Fyodor, we are praying daily for the end of the war.” And when you know that it just goes on and on and on without any perspective on horizon of the end of this war—I’m sometimes, I will be honest, I’m overwhelmed. Why would God not intervene in some ordinary way or extraordinary way and just prevent that person to cause so much suffering? When you have millions of people who happen to be refugees in foreign countries, when you have millions of people internally displaced.
Because I am also a military chaplain, I am often to the front line, and I see how much suffering and destruction this war caused. And then these millions of prayers. And then I know people who are not praying, but they are cursing, especially every morning after some destruction or some killings of people. And yet, you know, nothing happens. The evil just goes on and on and on. And then, you know, all kinds of thoughts are coming into your mind, and with all kinds of questions you fight. And yeah, it is also something that wears you off, yeah, emotionally, intellectually.
And then on the top of all this, you are a pastor of the church, and you have to encourage people, and you have to preach to them that there is hope and that we should keep praying, that we should keep hoping. And another thing that has happened: we have this hopophobia, you know. We have fear to hope, because whatever we hoped for over these four years, it just gets worse, not better. So it’s—yeah, probably I will stop here.
Mark Labberton: Yeah. Fyodor, take us to one of those field camps that you’ve been in when you’re with soldiers and the presence of the war is imminent and physically present in every way. How are people on the front line processing this? And how does that compare to the people, for example, in your church, who are also on a kind of front line, given the nature of this war, but are not necessarily literally fighting in the war? How do the two—how do you compare the two groups of people in their processing of this trauma? I mean, is it—one is right in the vortex of the military might, and the other is not fighting but present to it because of the way the war is developed?
Fyodor Raichynets: Oh, well, this is a very good question. On the front line, people are tired of killing. They wonder why the world doesn’t care. Why all those civilized, democratic countries—indecisive in political decisions? Why? Yeah.
And the other things that they struggle with is the moral issues—the aftereffect of killing a person that they struggle with. For example, it was on numerous occasions when soldiers would have a confession, and the story that repeats is that those whom they have killed, they come to them in their dreams, in their sleep. And they said that they physically sense it. They even sense it that someone is grabbing their hand. And these are—I don’t know how to explain this to these soldiers. And so that’s their struggle. That’s their questions. And yeah, they are afraid of the future, because they are afraid that this nightmare will never end in their lives. And they are seeking help, how they can get rid of these dreams and this unrest.
In the church in Bucha where I minister—well, there is another front line, where we have wives of those whom sons or husbands or fathers are fighting. And you have to understand that the same communication goes between them. And more or less the same issues that I heard on the front line I can hear in our church through the mouths of wives, mothers, daughters, sons, and so on and so forth.
Then the other front line goes right in the middle of the church, when we have a prayer group in our chats, and one wife would pray—or ask us to pray—that God would protect her son not to be drafted in. But in the same group there is a mother who asked to pray that God would protect her son on the front line. So what should we pray for? And what should we prioritize in our prayer list? So that there is a very mundane challenge, war challenge, that is present wherever you are. You are in the front line, you are in the church that is far from the front line but not far from war. Because the current war is not just attacking on the front line, but they would attack into rear front by sending rockets, drones. And explosions are happening not just on the front line. They’re happening everywhere.
So, yeah, in the church, probably people would ask, will this ever stop? And as you have probably heard this statement of Viktor Frankl, who used to say that in the camps during the Second World War—he says that there were people who have collapsed psychologically. So there were two types of people: who thought that it will end soon and it did not, or those who thought it will never end, you know. But those who have lived day after day without any particular hopes, but just lived their day and were finding a sense in living in the very day that God has granted to them—that’s how I am trying to live my life. I said, well, every morning, “Thank you, God, I have survived this night. So now I will live to the fullest of this day, because I don’t know what is ahead of me.” So if you are trying to find sense in every day and every opportunity that God graciously grants you, that is, I think, a way to preserve a common sense in the midst of—of hell.
Mark Labberton: Of hell, right. And some degree of just ordinary rationality. Yeah. I can do in this moment, in this day, what this day allows me to do.
Fyodor Raichynets: That’s a very—I say to my student, this is a very theological perception of time.
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Fyodor Raichynets: All that you have is the moment here and now. The past is already gone. The future is not here yet, and we don’t know whether it will come or not. So seize the moment, live it well. And by “live it well” I mean be a source of hope to those who are around you, and live a life of glory that glorifies God through whatever you do to the people around you. And that’s the only way to go on.
Mark Labberton: I think of a friend of mine named Ben Weir, who was a Presbyterian missionary in Beirut for years and years and was wrongly taken captive and held for hundreds of days and was ultimately released. But along the way, he was chained to a radiator and blindfolded in all the initial months. And one of the things that he spoke about after he was finally released was that he talked about how he almost immediately had an instinct that he needed to remember what the exact date was every day, what the exact day of the week was, and therefore be able to know his wife’s birthday and his children’s birthdays and the habits of liturgical practice as well as major holidays, and to keep himself sane by just never losing track of time.
Yeah. Talk to us about time, because part of what’s embedded in what you’re saying is that time is, in one sense, extraordinarily compressed into the gift of simply today, this moment. And how does that reality then change the way that you have typically lived your life—or much of your life has been lived with a much deeper, broader, longer sense of time than you’re living with now? Talk to us about that experience and how you hold it.
Fyodor Raichynets: Well, yes. Yeah, because of that kind of perception of time—well, the war does something with your memory and the way you perceive time. And because of that, because you cannot plan, as I’ve said, you have no sense of security wherever you are. Even when I’m abroad, I don’t have that sense anymore, because I feel much worse when I’m far away than when I’m here. Because when I’m here, I can do something. When I’m far away, I can do nothing to help anyone, to do something, and things like that, which is very weird. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that whenever I talk to anyone about anything, I always—well, not always, but because of the war I’m very aware of the fact that this might be our last conversation. This might be our—you know, I may not be back to this place anymore. I may not see this person anymore. And it just frames and defines the way you end conversation. If someone asks you something, you are more willing to give if you have, because this may be the last chance you give. If someone asks you to say something, you think carefully not to say anything but the essence of things that has something to do with the situation, because this may be the last time you say this. If you have disagreement with someone, you are trying not to end it that way. If you have a conflict with someone, you are trying to resolve it. If you have a chance to manifest your love, you do it the best way you can. If you are asked to forgive, or you think these things should be forgiven, you do it. You don’t postpone it for tomorrow, or you don’t do it by just the way you say that, “Well, I have to reflect more on this,” or “I have to think,” or “I have to pray about this.” There is no thinking. There is no reflection. There is no postponing things. You just do it right now.
And in some way, I think this is what Jesus taught us about time. But the war helped us to understand it better than a peaceful time. Because in a peaceful time, you always hope that there is tomorrow. You always hope that there will be another chance to resolve it, to solve it, to help someone, to pray for someone, or to give more time to a person who needs it more, and things like that. The war, at least for me, it helped me to grasp the theoretical understanding of time and transform it into more practical way—not just the practical way to understand it, but to practise it here and now without postponing further. Which does not mean that we still do not have bad conversation, or we don’t have disagreements, or we don’t have—but at least, because of war and because of constant attacks and a constant sense of insecurity, I personally do it differently. I’m trying to—yeah, to help if I can, to say something significant if I’m asked. If I am to give something, I give. If I am to forgive, I forgive. If I am to bless, I bless. You just do it more quickly, more resolutely, because this might be the only chance or the last chance, because you don’t know.
Mark Labberton: You know, there’s a shorthand definition I’ve used for biblical wisdom that I would like you to interact with a bit. My understanding of biblical wisdom is that it’s the truth and character of God lived in context. And when those three things align, you have the three most critical ingredients: that it’s coming from beyond ourselves, that it has to be embodied, and that it has to be embodied in context—which, in the context that you’re living in, is a context where time has been changed, where ordinary circumstances and assumptions have been dramatically changed, where what you’re describing is to me a beautiful expression of wisdom.
And I guess I’m wondering—maybe another image that comes to my mind is that for anybody who’s ever preached, you know that there’s that moment when you’ve done whatever you have been able to do to prepare, and now the service has gone on, and now you’re standing in front of the congregation and you haven’t yet spoken. But you’re looking at the community and you’re thinking, What is going on here? How overwhelming that moment can be, even in the most ordinary, nonviolent, nonmilitarized, nonwarlike moments—that can be overwhelming. But in the context that you’re preaching in, again, this sense of the truth and character of God being lived in context is the rubric, I think, for how we try to learn to live wisely. But that means we’re constantly having to face the reality of what’s actually happening on the ground. And what you’ve been sharing so much is the horror and the richness and the presence of God providing you perspective, to at least some significant degree. Is that a fair way of describing?
Fyodor Raichynets: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and that is something that I’ve described in my portion that I wrote, or contributed, to the book Beatitudes and Terror, because I was writing on the Beatitude of pure hearts, because they will see God. And yeah, that’s exactly what I’ve said, that the—because “Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.” I said that in this one statement, we have two biblical contradictions. Bible is not very optimistic about the purity of the human heart.
Mark Labberton: Indeed.
Fyodor Raichynets: Depravity or a moral corruption of the human heart. Bible is not very positive about seeing God face to face. It rather states that, you know, you cannot see God and remain alive, or things like that. But I said that this Beatitude states that the purity of heart is possible, and it promises that we can see God—an invisible God—in the world in which we are called to live. And as you have said, to implement or to incarnate this divine truth in our human relations.
And that’s why I said that in Matthew, you have these five books of teaching. He starts in the first book with the Beatitudes, and he ends in the fifth book with this story or a parable—we don’t know, because it’s a weird parable and weird story. And I said that there is this answer. Because Jesus says to the righteous and unrighteous the same thing. He says, “When I was hungry, you fed me.” So the righteous people said, “Well, when were you hungry?” Well, he says, “Because you have fed the least one”—this is the Matthean terminology—”you have fed me.” And the unrighteous people, the same way they responded. They said, “Well, when were you hungry? You know, we didn’t feed the people, hungry people. But if we would see you, Lord, we would feed you, because you are the Lord.” So this ability of seeing God in the needy one, that is what makes my heart pure.
And applying to the context—that’s the third component of your wisdom—I said that war creates such a basic need. Because suddenly in a war situation, you need very basic things. You need water. You don’t need the luxury things. You just need the very basic things. So when we see the needy people and we minister to them, that is what makes us a people of a pure heart. So an ability to see God in a needy person—that’s how I interpret the pureness of heart of the righteous person, because these are the people who have not lost an ability to sense God in the midst of human cruelty. These are the people who do not deny God in the midst of suffering, but they sense his presence and they offer the alternative to the suffering. And they are, as he is, helping those who suffer more. Because I said that what makes suffering senseless is the awareness that I am alone in the midst of it. And what fills the suffering with the sense, the profound sense, is when I am aware that I am not alone in the midst of suffering, but there is someone much stronger than I next to me in the suffering.
And that’s exactly what Isaiah’s image of this suffering servant of Yahweh depicts, when, you know, because—what makes Jesus different from the kings and the pharaohs and emperors is that emperors and pharaohs might be the cause of suffering. But Jesus, the other way, he is in the midst with you of the suffering, and he helps you to carry it and to cope with it in a dignified way, and to treat those who are humiliated in the way of dignity.
And that’s what helps me to minister to those. Because when the war started, I’ve said to my friends, “Well, I know what I will do in the midst of war. I will minister to those who are more vulnerable than I am.” And these are the elderly people. These are the orphans. These are the families of those who have sacrificed in this war. I mean, the family would sacrifice a husband or a father or a son. And because they’ve lost the one who have took care of them, we have to somehow fill in and take care of them. And that’s what we did. We would have addresses from soldiers of their families, the needs of their families, the needs of their kids or the parents. For example, they would say, “Well, here my family lives, and my mother sick and she needs a medicine.” So we would find this medicine and we would provide to the mother. And because the soldiers knew that someone is taking care of their family, they would fight with—well, in a radically different way, because they’ve sensed that there is someone who is taking care of their family, of their children, of their parents, of their spouses, and so on and so on.
Mark Labberton: Right. Fyodor, there are thousands of Russians who live in Ukraine while this war has been going on—at least that’s what I’ve understood. And so I wonder the differentiation or the negotiation or the reflection that comes with serving the needy who include Russians. How—what does serving Russians in Ukraine mean right now, given all things?
Fyodor Raichynets: Well, I will share with you our story. When we go to the front line, to the Donetsk region and Luhansk region, the people that stay there—I mean the civilians that stay there—most of them are those who are waiting for the Russians to come. So in their mentality, in the way they—well, they would use Russian language as a language to communicate. Sometimes they would not treat our soldiers well. They would film our soldiers and then they would send the information to the enemies, and our soldiers would end up in traps and things like that. And when we have humanitarian aid with us, medicine—and yeah, there was at times a moral challenge for us whether we should help them or not. So we just keep going and help them, and we would not differentiate or distinguish them, because, you know, we don’t know who are doing what. And if I have something to share and there is a person that needs it, well, I would share anyway. So that’s not just a theoretical thing. That’s what we do. That’s what we do for all these four years. And probably that’s what the love for the enemies is all about.
Mark Labberton: Fyodor, I could continue this conversation for some time, but I think what you’ve just shared, and the place that you’re living and serving and being in Christ’s name, is all we need for today. Thank you so much for the gift of this time.
Fyodor Raichynets: Yes, you’re most welcome. It was a pleasure to meet you and to talk to you.
Mark Labberton: We’ll be putting in the show notes a variety of ways that people could support your seminary or your church, or we’ll take the information that you give us with seriousness and try to distribute to people who might want to contribute financially in any way to the encouragement of Ukraine and to the service that you’re trying to provide on what feels like the potential of an endless war. So it makes us all the more important that we actually continue to sustain our support and encouragement and help in whatever small ways we can. Meanwhile, I just want to say I’m hugely challenged and encouraged by this conversation. Thank you again.
Fyodor Raichynets: Thank you, Mark. And it was a pleasure to talk to you.
