Anti-Ukrainian Propaganda and Terrorism Allegations, by Katey Hearth, Mission Network News
"...evangelical workers and missionaries in Russia with roots in Ukraine face the heaviest pressure. “They say, ‘Baptists are becoming terrorists.’ So in Russia, instead of [coining Baptists as] sectarians (sectarian was a horrible word, and still is a horrible word), now to associate Baptists with terrorism is extreme.”
"Since many Baptists can’t afford the grand-scale buildings of the Muslims or the Orthodox Church, they meet in cell groups, or house churches. In what was a natural response to a lack of meeting space, their approach is now interpreted as subversive. No one knows if this is the potential beginning of more trouble for missionaries from Ukraine.
“This has created fear. This has created confusion and the potential beginning of the escalation of pressure,” says Kulakoff, adding that the result of RMI’s successful ministry for the last two decades was hundreds of new church plants.
"The Russian propaganda machine could change that through the terrorist label. Simply, Kulakoff says, “We need to pray for them that God would give [believers] wisdom, that God would give them the endurance and the ability to stand before authorities, to stand before the government and to tell them that they have a commission from Jesus Christ to disciple people, to baptize them, to teach them all that the Scriptures have for each one of them.'”
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