World Race Country #11: Ukraine
We will wrap up our almost year-long missions trip in Ukraine. Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has since veered between seeking closer integration with Western Europe and being drawn into the orbit of Russia, which sees its interests as threatened by a Western-leaning Ukraine. Europe’s second largest country, Ukraine is a land of wide, fertile agricultural plains, with large pockets of heavy industry in the east. While Ukraine and Russia share common historical origins, the west of the country has closer ties with its European neighbours, particularly Poland, and nationalist sentiment is strongest there. A significant minority of the population uses Russian as its first language, particularly in the cities and the industrialised east. The most common religion is Eastern Orthodoxy. It’s estimated that 75% of the population believes in God, but only 37% attend any kind of service regularly. The government has shown little effort in responding to what has been called an “epidemic” of human trafficking; Men, women, and children in Ukraine are being trafficked for the purpose of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Caught between the East and the West, the past and the future, the people of Ukraine need to know God sees and loves them. Would you like to be a part of that?
Info from BBCNews.com
