CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
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News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
UKRAINE SPECIAL REPORT 4, CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
NOON EDITION, March 4, 2014
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth special report on Ukraine. You will receive the full Christian News From Ray later today. For any who wonder why I am keeping you posted with these reports from this one country, it is because this world has not in the 21st Century had anything near the intense seriousness or the worldwide implications and terrible danger that is present right now globally. Anything could happen. Someone’s itchy trigger finger could begin World War III.
It is a time to pray not only for America but for Christians worldwide and for the world itself. Hostilities could end soon, but the lingering memory of what Russia has done will not go away in the minds of those who have seen what’s happening. No longer can President Obama say and be believed that America’s Cold War with Russia is long past. Perhaps nothing could be more foolish or dangerous than to shrink our military in chilling days like these. PRAY! – Ray
AN EERIE STANDOFF HANGS OVER CRIMEA WHILE THE WORLD TURNS
(CNN)Simferopol, Ukraine – Russia does not want to take over Ukraine’s Crimea region, President Vladimir Putin said today, but he showed no signs of backing down over Russia’s right to intervene despite Western pressure. In defiant words, he said what had happened in Ukraine was an “anti-constitutional coup and armed seizure of power,” and insisted that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is the legitimate leader of the nation.
He also insisted that if Russian-speaking citizens in the east of Ukraine ask for Russia’s help, Russia has the right “to take all measures to protect the rights of those people.” The parliament in Ukraine is “partly legitimate,” he said, but the country’s acting President is not.
Appearing at ease as he addressed a handful of reporters in Moscow, Putin said only the people of Crimea, a Russian-dominated autonomous region, could determine their future. blockading Ukrainian forces in their bases and controlling key institutions were local “self-defense teams.”
The troops in question — who appeared in Crimea late last week — are wearing uniforms without identifying insignia. But some have told CNN teams on the ground that they are indeed from Russia, and they are making use of military vehicles with Russian registration plates.
Putin said that there had been no need for the use of Russia’s military so far, with not a shot fired, and that any use of military force would be the last resort. He repeatedly cast any such intervention as a humanitarian mission.
Military action, he said, would be “completely legitimate. Firstly, we have a request of the legitimate President Yanukovych to protect the welfare of the local population. We have neo-Nazis and Nazis and anti-Semites in parts of Ukraine, including Kiev,” Putin said.
At the same time as he appeared to use that request to justify a Russian intervention, Putin said he saw no political future for Yanukovych, who resurfaced in Russia last week after fleeing Kiev 10 days ago.
The Russian President also pointed out what he sees as a double standard by leaders in the United States and other Western countries, saying that the U.S. acted in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya without a U.N. resolution authorizing that action or by “twisting” U.N. Resolutions. And he warned that any damage from sanctions imposed by the West against Russia over its actions in Ukraine would be multilateral.
Shortly after Putin’s remarks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kiev, bearing offers of much needed financial help and showing his support for the fledgling Ukrainian government. His first stop was a somber one: Paying respects to the dozens killed in bloody clashes between security forces and protesters in Kiev at a makeshift shrine in the capital, piled high with flowers.
Now will come meetings with Ukraine’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Oleksandr Turchynov and members of parliament.
A team from the International Monetary Fund is also expected in Kiev today to begin a fact-finding mission that will look at possible financial help and necessary reforms.
The White House said the United States would give Ukraine a $1 billion loan guarantee to help insulate the Ukrainian economy from the effects of reduced energy subsidies from Russia. The loan guarantee will help Ukraine move forward with an IMF assistance package, which calls for it to raise energy prices.
The Ukrainian parliament ratified an agreement Tuesday to receive loans from the European Union worth 610 million euros, the equivalent of nearly $839 million. The parliament is based in Kiev, where many emphasize ties to the West, as opposed to people in eastern Ukraine, where loyalty to Russia runs deep.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s military scrambled eight F-16 fighter jets for “control and prevention measures” after a Russian surveillance plane “flew parallel along our Black Sea coast in international airspace,” according to a Turkish military website. There has been no immediate comment on this from Russia.
And in Brussels, Belgium, NATO said its representatives would meet with Russian officials Wednesday. That announcement came as NATO allies huddled in emergency talks requested by Poland, which considers itself to be under threat by the drama in neighboring Ukraine. NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said the allies were united in solidarity with Poland. “Obviously, this is a crisis which is very serious. It has an impact, not just on Ukraine, and Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also on instability in the whole region,” she said.
Russia declined an invitation to hold diplomatic talks with Ukraine’s government, a senior U.S. administration official told CNN on Tuesday. Russia had been invited to a Wednesday meeting in Paris of signatory countries to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a pact of security assurances signed by the United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine and Russia.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told CNN’s “New Day” that she did not believe Putin’s claims that he was protecting endangered Russian citizens.
“There is not this kind of a crisis in terms of the way that the Russian-speaking people are in some way being harmed. So this is all made up. “I think it’s part of a much longer-term plan that Putin has had, which is to try to re-create some form of relationship between Ukraine and Moscow. I think that is the tragedy that’s going on. Putin is in many ways, I think, delusional about it.”
This morning, about 150,000 Russian troops taking part in military exercises near the Ukrainian border were ordered back to their bases, but thousands of others remain in control of much of Crimea. Putin ordered the troops’ return after six days of snap exercises at Ukraine’s doorstep. He said the exercises, which began Wednesday, were long planned and had nothing to do with events in Ukraine.
But Ukraine’s new interim authorities are far from reassured.
Andriy Parubiy, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told parliament that Ukraine has doubled its security presence at checkpoints on the northeastern and eastern borders of the country to prevent any incursions by Russian “extremists.” At this stage, Ukraine border security officials are not seeing any cross-border activity, he said. Sergey Astahov, assistant to the head of the Ukraine Security Border Service, earlier told CNN that Russian troops and vehicles remained near the country’s eastern border with Russia. Meanwhile, an eerie standoff continued in Crimea, with no shots fired in anger on either side but tensions high.
The crisis has divided many in the majority ethnic Russian region, which hosts a major Russian naval base in the port of Sevastopol. At least 700 Ukrainian soldiers and officers defected Tuesday, announcing their readiness to defend the population of Crimea, RIA Novosti said, citing a spokesman for the newly installed Crimean authority. But Ukraine’s Defense Ministry dismissed the claim as “untruthful information.” Parubiy said personnel at all of Ukraine’s border security points in Crimea are being subjected to “psychological attacks” by 100 armed men. He did not identify who these armed men are.
The government is sending food, water and other essentials to the military bases currently blockaded by Russian forces, he added.
Anxieties have been heightened by a confrontation between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian forces at Belbek Air Base, near Sevastopol. Russian forces are seen firing shots into the air, warning unarmed Ukrainian soldiers from approaching them.
The commander of the Belbek base, Yuli Mamchun, told CNN his forces had received a demand to put down their weapons by noon local time. They refused to comply, he said, adding that it was the latest in long line of demands.
A wider ultimatum for Ukrainian forces to surrender to the Russian forces early today also passed without incident. Earlier, Vladislav Seleznyov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry press office in Crimea, told CNN it had been largely quiet in Crimea overnight.
A group of pro-Russian Cossacks in civilian dress attempted to attack the Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, Seleznyov said, but Ukrainian forces repelled the attack and no shots were fired.
On Monday evening, Russian troops also moved into the Russian side of a narrow sea channel dividing Russia and Crimea, opposite the Ukrainian city of Kerch, he added. The military maneuvers are not just on land.
The flagship of the Ukrainian navy’s Black Sea Fleet, the frigate Hetman Saraidachny, is headed back to the Black Sea via the Bosporus, the Ukrainian Consulate in Istanbul said. Earlier Tuesday, two other Russian warships steamed up the Bosporus toward the Black Sea.
At an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Monday to discuss the unfolding crisis, Ukraine’s envoy asked for help, saying that Russia had used planes, boats and helicopters to flood the Crimean Peninsula with 16,000 troops in the past week. “So far, Ukrainian armed forces have exercised restraint and refrained from active resistance to the aggression, but they are in full operational readiness,” Ukrainian Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev said.
However, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin insisted his country’s aims were preserving democracy, protecting millions of Russians in Ukraine and stopping radical extremists. He read a letter from Yanukovych at the U.N. meeting, describing Ukraine as a country “on the brink of civil war,” plagued by “chaos and anarchy.”
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said Russia’s claims about the situation in Ukraine are untrue and warned that sending military forces “could be devastating.”
U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States is examining a series of economic and diplomatic steps to “isolate Russia.”
CNN’s Diana Magnay reported from Simferopol and Phil Black from Moscow, while Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported in London. CNN’s Matthew Chance, Elise Labott and journalist Azad Safarov in Kiev contributed to this report. CNN’s Ivan Watson, Gul Tuysuz and Susannah Palk also contributed.
BILLY GRAHAM MAY BE OLD BUT HE REMAINS VERY WISE
Viktor Hamm arrived in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday in the midst of an escalating crisis that has grabbed the attention of the world. Hamm, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Vice President of Crusades, knows the region well. Born inside an infamous Soviet labor camp in what is now northwest Russia, he became a Christian preacher—against all odds—and has preached the Gospel on Ukrainian street corners, military bases and in stadiums as a BGEA associate evangelist.
But before Hamm ever dreamed of proclaiming the hope of Christ publicly in Ukraine, Billy Graham helped fling open the doors of evangelism in the Soviet Union when he first visited the region in the 1980s, under communist rule.
Decades later, his son, Franklin Graham, would continue to carry the torch by sharing the Gospel with tens of thousands of Ukrainians in 2007.
This week, Viktor Hamm is returning to Ukraine to encourage the many churches affected by the violent uprisings that have taken place in the country.
“My visit to Ukraine is to show BGEA support to the churches and encourage church leaders to focus on Kingdom goals even in this tragic hour,” he said.
Hamm hopes to meet with his friend, Oleksandr Turchynov, who was thrust into the international spotlight when the Ukrainian parliament ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and made Turchynov acting president of the country.
“Mr. Turchynov is a member of an evangelical church in Kiev, a solid evangelical believer, a Brother in Christ and a great political leader,” Hamm said. “With all that he has on his plate right now, he needs our prayers for great wisdom, stamina and peace.”
Hamm’s visit to an increasingly divided Ukraine comes 26 years after Billy Graham visited the same city, when it was still under communist rule.
In June of 1988, Mr. Graham was invited to visit the Soviet Union to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity in the region. In 988, Prince Vladimir had baptized the people of the region in the Dnieper River. “As Prince Vladimir changed and turned from idols, you must change and turn to Christ,” Mr. Graham told crowds gathered at Kiev’s Shevchenko Theater on June 14, 1988.
That same day, he preached the Gospel to a crowd of about 15,000 gathered at Kiev’s most famous Orthodox cathedral. Military generators manned by Soviet troops supplied the power for loudspeakers that broadcast the message into the streets, where Mr. Graham’s voice could be heard a block away. The September, 1988, edition of Decision magazine reported “church bells pealing for the first time in decades.”
Spiritually and politically, it was an historic moment—one that Hamm says could only have been orchestrated by the Lord. Never before, had an evangelical preached in an Orthodox church to such an extent,” he said. “After 70 years of atheism, for the first time the Gospel was proclaimed publicly to large crowds. God used this occasion to bring about a new era in the Soviet Union, the largest country in the world.”
Hamm said the number of evangelical Christians in Ukraine quadrupled during the 25 years following the BGEA’s first visit to the country. Once the doors had been opened to evangelism, Viktor Hamm followed in Mr. Graham’s footsteps, preaching at 16 BGEA Crusades in Ukraine between 1994 and 2006.
In 2007, Franklin Graham was part of another historic moment for Christianity in Ukraine, when some 90,000 people heard the Gospel at the Ukraine Franklin Graham Festival of Hope in Kiev. Following a series of political protests that Hamm said led to a sense of hopelessness among many Ukrainians, the local churches took an opportunity to tell their friends and neighbors about the hope of Jesus Christ.
Now, seven years later, Ukrainian believers once again face a choice: give in to hopelessness as they mourn the deadly violence that has rocked their nation…or, cling to the hope they have in Christ, and work for peace. “We need to encourage all Christians around the globe to pray for Ukraine and Crimea,” Hamm said, “that believers would be strengthened in their faith, that churches would not be divided along ethnic lines, that the country would be preserved as a whole, since it has the strongest evangelical witness in Europe.”
A March 3 CNN.com article described Ukraine as “torn between whether Russia or the Western economies (including the European Union) is the savior it needs.”
Ukrainian believers would argue that only one Savior can bring lasting peace to the region—the same Savior who has carried the churches through more than 1,000 years of history—Jesus Christ. In this case, Mr. Graham’s words from his 1988 visit to Kiev may be more appropriate now than ever: “One thousand years ago Kievan Rus stood at a moral and spiritual crossroads which would determine its future. In like manner, our world stands at a moral and spiritual crossroads. Our world today needs a spiritual ‘perestroika’ – a spiritual transformation.
“As a Christian, I believe only the rediscovery of the Bible’s unchanging message can give us lasting meaning and hope.”
Editors Note: Pray too for the Christians in Russia and all of the extending areas under threat. My great friends of many years, Bob and Jan Claus, are leaving their home in Collinsville, Illinois to go to Transnistria for missionary work with five others who are part of Open Gates Ministries. Transnistria is a breakaway state from Russia, located mostly on a strip of land between the River Dniester and Eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine. It is a state with limited recognition and is unrecognized by any United Nations member state. They will be working the local churches that are independent of the Russian Orthodox Church – born-again believers in love with Jesus. I urge you in light of the current crisis in Ukraine to keep them and Transnistria on your prayer list.
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You would give more and pray more for missionaries
if you had to suddenly trade places with them.
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uKRAINE SPECIAL REPORT 4 – cHRISTIAN NEWS FROM rAY – NOON EDITION, March 4, 2014
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