Hope in the Midst of War: God Uses a Calvary Chapel Woman to Minister to Ukrainian Soldiers
Photos courtesy of Sasha Andriyashina
It was a defining moment for volunteer chaplain Oleksandra “Sasha” Andriyashina. It was 2014, and she was traveling on an overnight train in Eastern Ukraine, returning from delivering a shipment of tourniquets to front-line soldiers. A young man was traveling with her in the same compartment, and Sasha started up a conversation. He was on military leave to visit his family. They talked for hours. Sasha mostly listened. When she tried to share the Gospel, he wasn’t open, but he wanted to talk. He seemed to sense that she was a safe person.
Halfway through the night, in the middle of his fifth smoke in the open area at the end of the car, he unburdened himself. Looking at Sasha through the smoke, his eyes dark and heavy, he said, “You know, I do my work. I’m really good at my job, but I hate it.” He was a sniper.
Over a decade later, Sasha still replays that moment in her mind. She realized that even though he was a highly trained killing machine, he hadn’t lost his humanity. He had to do his job to protect his country, but taking another life tormented him. “That experience helped me to know that, though soldiers don’t always show it, they need the chaplains' ministry. They need God,” Sasha says.
A Faithful Servant
A Kyiv native, Sasha is one of the earliest members of Calvary Chapel Kyiv. She counts the founders of that church, Pastor George and Pam Markey, as her spiritual parents. She has been involved in children’s ministry and women’s ministry for over thirty years and is a trained counselor. In 2014, after the beginning of the Russian-backed fighting in the eastern part of Ukraine, some friends of hers began making regular trips to plant a church in a city called Stanytsa Luhanska, far to the east. They invited Sasha to join them on a two-week outreach. She went along—and ended up staying for four years.
Stanytsa Luhanska had been under Russian occupation. Though now liberated, it was still close to the conflict zone. Shelling and missile strikes were so commonplace that even young children knew what to do to protect themselves. An eleven-year-old girl whom Sasha met even told her that after a really bad bombardment, she discovered the remains of her neighbor scattered around the yard and had to help her mother collect them and take everything to the morgue. These traumatized people needed a counselor.
While living among them, Sasha experienced the same trauma as the people she was serving. She learned to lie on the floor of her apartment during bombardments, how to recognize if it was artillery rounds or missile strikes, and to count the explosions in order to know when the barrage was finished, since they followed predictable patterns. During these terrifying moments, she would make a fist with one hand and imagine that she was holding tightly to the hand of Jesus in her clenched fingers.
Sasha’s years of ministry in Stanytsa Luhanska birthed a church in this desperately needy community. At the same time, she also began to travel to visit soldiers at their posts. Using her counseling expertise and her gift of evangelism, she would encourage them and give them the light of the Gospel. Throughout this period, God continually opened new doors for her to minister as a volunteer chaplain to the armed forces, granting her incredible favor with their commanding officers.
After the church in Stanytsa Luhanska was well established, God provided for Sasha to move to Avdiivka. This city had easier access to the many soldiers she had come to know and love. In Avdiivka, Sasha also served the civilian community through a local church.
When Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Sasha was still living in Avdiivka. As Russian troops pushed into Ukraine from three sides, Sasha raced to Kyiv to evacuate her elderly mother from the capital city, which was in danger of falling to advancing Russian forces. After she got her mother settled in a safe place, in June, Sasha returned to the frontlines to continue ministering to the men she had come to consider as her soldiers.
An Official First!
That autumn, Ukraine passed a law on military chaplaincy, changing it from merely a volunteer position to an officially recognized role, showing how highly Ukrainian officials value Christianity. Reports that the Ukrainian government is anti-Christian have no basis in fact. Churches in Ukraine are granted great freedom, except for the Russian Orthodox Church, and this group is only limited because it serves as a cover for Russian spies. True Christians enjoy great favor.
After the change in the law, a certain commander who knew Sasha invited her to become the chaplain for his battalion of hundreds of men. Sasha had never considered joining the army, and many people advised her against it. Army life is hard, and she was an older woman with several health challenges. But she filled out the application and left the decision in God’s hands. On January 4, 2023, the Ukrainian army recognized Oleksandra Andriyashina as its first official female officer chaplain.
Many things about Sasha’s life have changed since taking on this new role, but one thing has remained the same—her love and devotion to the men and women in uniform and their families. With her characteristic combination of compassion and wit, she easily builds bridges, introducing spiritual truths to even the most resistant soldiers. She prays with them, teaches them to talk to God and study the Bible, and even takes them to serve at an orphanage in a nearby town. Over the years, she’s seen many come to saving faith in Jesus.
She’s also seen many friends die. Over forty men and women who were close to her have been killed by Russian forces since 2022. For Sasha, this is the hardest thing about being a chaplain. One of the earliest losses was a young man who had been part of the church youth group that Sasha led in Stanytsa Luhanska, the first frontline city where she lived. He enlisted in the army when he was 19. He was killed a year later. He’d had no parents and had been like a son to Sasha. His death broke her. Her only consolation is that she knows he’s with Jesus.
Despite all the grief, Sasha persists in this work. She knows that what she is doing is making a difference. Instead of being overcome by evil, God is using her to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21b). Besides supporting soldiers, she counsels civilians as well. She teaches them how to manage fear, how to deal with their hatred of Russians, and offers bereavement counseling to the families of fallen soldiers.
Beauty From Ashes
To comfort the women in bereavement counseling, Sasha affirms the ultimate sacrifice their loved ones made with Jesus’ words in John 15:13, Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. She goes on, “We’re not just fighting for our territory. We are fighting for our children, our future, our language, our culture, our history, our freedom, our beliefs—the entire existence of Ukraine.”
One woman was so inspired by these ideas that she compiled stories from other grieving families and wrote a book that is now in every major Ukrainian library and government office. Afterwards, having found a new sense of purpose in life, this same woman began visiting wounded soldiers in the hospital. She’s famous among the men now, who love her and eagerly anticipate her visits. She told Sasha, “Only God could do this: the war took both of my sons, but God has given me dozens of young men who call me Mom.”
At the end of the day, God is still bringing beauty from the ashes, but many Ukrainians are having a crisis of faith. Soldiers aren’t the only ones dying. Many civilians are being killed too, because Russia routinely targets apartment buildings. People are exhausted by the war, but they know they have to stand against evil. Ongoing atrocities have shown them that if they stop fighting, their country will cease to exist, and their people will be slowly erased. Pray for Sasha and for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, that God will give them a message of hope in the Gospel that will overpower the darkness of war.
Sasha is also involved in ongoing projects that support the families of Ukrainian soldiers and veterans. For more information, she can be contacted at andriyashina.a@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading! If this story inspired you, we invite you to partner with us in continuing the ministry God started over 26 years ago. We appreciate your prayerful consideration in joining us to reach more souls for Jesus.
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