Pastor killed after Russian strike on Baptist church during prayer meeting

Russia struck a Baptist church within the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia during a prayer meeting this week, killing at the very least one person, a minister, and injuring at the very least eight others. 

The Embassy of Ukraine within the US gave the casualty figures in a public statement issued while rescue staff were still on the scene, identifying the targeted constructing as The House of the Gospel Church, which had served the community for years, in response to Baptist Press.

The embassy called the strike a deliberate attack on people of religion who had gathered peacefully to wish.

Promoters of “A Faith Under Siege,” a documentary series reporting Russia’s persecution of Christians, identified the person killed as Ruslan Utyuzh, a minister on the bombed church. Utyuzh is survived by his wife and two children.

Baptist Standard quoted Pavel Unguryan, a former Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, as saying that several church leaders were inside on the time of the attack to rejoice Easter on Thursday, and that seven or eight people were seriously wounded.

More than 300 people had called the constructing their spiritual home, Unguryan said, adding that as much as 700 churches have been destroyed for the reason that starting of the war in Ukraine. He called the attack a direct assault on people of religion who had gathered peacefully to worship God, and appealed for prayer and motion.

Unguryan served as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament until 2019 and was appointed to the Order of Merit of the III degree in 2017, in response to the US-Ukraine Business Council.

Mission Eurasia, a Gospel-based humanitarian group with offices in Franklin, Tennessee, has a detailed, longstanding relationship with the congregation, Kate Akers, the group’s director of selling, was quoted as saying.

The church began as an underground congregation, Akers was quoted as saying. One of its members is a key leader at Mission Eurasia.

Akers said churches like this one are sometimes targeted, especially once they are serving their communities in times of crisis, and that this was one reason Mission Eurasia had devoted significant attention to documenting religious persecution and attacks on churches in Ukraine.

The strike was neither an accident nor an isolated incident, Colby Barrett, producer of the documentary “A Faith Under Siege,” was quoted as saying. He added that Russia had reportedly used a KAB-1500L laser-guided precision bomb within the attack.

Barrett said the churches being hit weren’t only places of worship but lifelines providing humanitarian aid and hope to their communities, and that this was why they were being targeted.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin was attempting to strip communities of the religion and support systems that sustained them, but predicted that Ukrainians would prevail. He added that Russia has increasingly been striking churches and other sites while Christians are gathered there, killing at the very least 58 priests and pastors and damaging or destroying greater than 700 churches in Ukraine.

Barrett recounted an attack last September on a megachurch he attends in Kyiv, where the congregation had built a 4,500-person worship hall and was holding the opening ceremony.

Hundreds of pastors from all across Ukraine were within the complex the night before the hall was as a result of open for a pastors’ conference. Russia sent two Shahed drones to the complex, Barrett said, and each narrowly missed, by about 3 feet, destroying cars in a close-by car parking zone as a substitute.

Had the strikes been successful, at the very least 20 pastors might have been killed while lodging prematurely of the conference, and the church would have been destroyed, Barrett said.

Despite the attack, the congregation held services as normal the next morning with a big turnout, and 200 people got here forward to be baptized.

© The Christian Post