I Hung Out With a Ukrainian and A Russian in A Kazakhstan Hotel

We had a strange, cool conversation

The last time I spoke to a Ukrainian I was in my 20s. Igor was in his 20s too, and we were in a bare hotel room in a small city in Kazakhstan.

It was a five-star hotel that deserved two stars.

Igor was a translator for the short-term mission team from our church, and there was a Russian thirteen-year-old, Sasha, hanging out with us.

So it was a Ukrainian, Russian, and American playing cards and talking into the night, and after we covered life in Russia where Igor’s family had immigrated as a child, I asked him a question that had been on my mind.

“You translated when Christian [our team leader] shared how he came to know Jesus after we showed the Jesus film. I wonder, while you translated his story about coming to believe in Jesus, whether or not you believe in Jesus.”

His reply was 50/50. He said he had been thinking about it, so I took out a bible I had with one page in English and the same page in Russian. I opened up the bible to one of the most often quoted verses in the bible, John 3:16.

A strange conversation

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16

I started talking to Igor about the verse and what it meant, and then when there was a pause, the Russian teenager began speaking to him about the verse, and we had the strangest but coolest conversation I’ve had in my life.

When I talked to Igor, he would respond to me in English, and whenever Sasha talked with him, Igor would answer him in Russian. It was a three-way conversation in Russian and English.

Sasha spoke maybe five words of English. It was the same as my Russian.

But even though neither Sasha nor I understand what each other was saying, we knew that we were talking about Jesus providing eternal life and sharing what it meant to believe in Jesus.

The Ukraine War

This conversation came into my mind reading a Newsweek story about a Russian pilot admitting to bombing civilians. The pilot was shot down and taken into custody by Ukrainian forces in one of his bombing missions.

“In the process of completing the task, I realized that the target was not the enemy military facilities, but residential buildings, peaceful people,” Lieutenant Colonel Krishtop Maxim Sergeevich said.

Vladimir Putin has said in news reports his invasion of Ukraine would not target civilians. However, multiple towns and cities have been bombed, resulting in a refugee crisis and 1,546 confirmed Ukrainian casualties.

I realized this war is like the Cold War between the United States and Russia, where the people in both countries had no animosity towards each other. It was an ideological war between the leaders of Russia and the United States.

In the case of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is the leader of Russia who initiated the war against one of its former Soviet republics, and I’m sure most of the Russian and Ukrainian people bear no animosity towards each other.

I doubt the average working-class Russian has a nationalistic desire to retake a country that established independence from Russia 31 years ago. I’m sure their mind is on ordinary events such as waking up and going to work.

Russians’ view on Ukraine

I imagine most Russian people are probably like my friend, Sasha. They don’t view people in Ukraine as an enemy. They may see them as friends since there are many Ukrainian people who immigrated to Russia in the 20th century.

I’m sure people like Sasha —who is now in his 40s — ache like I do when they consider the lost lives of civilians and the effect the devastation and the toll the war will have on the people in Ukraine for the next several generations.

And I suspect Sasha remembers how Igor said he wanted to be forgiven of his sins and to believe in Jesus that night long ago in a hotel room in Kazahkstan.

And how after the three of us prayed we all opened our eyes with tears.

Thank you for reading my story.

Shout out to Susan Wheelock and her fascinating story, “Lessons Learned From TikTok,” about the Ukraine War.

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