A Russian strike on the evening of Friday, Aug. 28, destroyed the warehouse and office used by the humanitarian arm of Ukraine for Christ, a Christian mission that had run the site for four years, the organization said in a statement posted on Facebook.
"Now everything has been destroyed: food, boxes, equipment, tools, generators, vehicles," the mission wrote, adding that a large quantity of relief supplies was also lost. It described the property as an entirely civilian facility used daily to help people in need.
The warehouse stood on land belonging to a business owned by friends of the ministry, which was destroyed as well. Ukraine for Christ did not identify the location of the site or report any casualties, and said it was still counting its losses.
175,000 food parcels in four years
The building had served as one of the mission's main aid depots since June 2022. Volunteers assembled about 175,000 food parcels there, including the yellow boxes the ministry distributes as standard packages, Christmas parcels and consignments prepared for soldiers. More than 600 metric tons of relief goods arrived at the site from partner organizations in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.
"This was much more than a storage facility," the statement said. More than 1,000 volunteers from different churches and charities worked there over the years, and teams left from the site for trips to communities near the front line.
More than 300 churches of various denominations, along with nonprofit groups, helped distribute the aid across Ukraine. The mission listed joint projects with Ukraine's Ministry for Veterans Affairs, the Military Chaplaincy Service of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command, the juvenile police and the Department of Social Ministry of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Part of the property was given over to housing. Staff converted shipping containers into living quarters for families displaced by the war. Aid from the warehouse reached displaced people, families of those killed in the fighting, chaplains and veterans in different regions, according to the Facebook post.
Materials from the mission's evangelistic outreach known as The Four, including bracelets and patches, were also destroyed.
'We believe this is not the end'
The statement asked supporters for prayer rather than immediate financial help. "Please pray with us for wisdom, strength, and clarity about our next steps," it said.
"We believe this is not the end," the mission added. "God will give us opportunities to continue this ministry and to bring the hope of the Gospel, which Ukrainians need more and more with each passing day."
Ukraine for Christ describes itself as a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International that has worked in the country since 1991, when the first foreign missionaries arrived after Ukraine gained independence. Its website says the organization now has more than 140 Ukrainian staff and combines relief work with chaplaincy, student outreach and church partnerships.
Wider attacks on civilian sites
The strike came during a sustained series of Russian air attacks in late August that hit warehouses, homes and energy infrastructure in several regions. Ukraine's agriculture minister, Taras Vysotskyi, said on Aug. 28 that Russian strikes had destroyed most of the country's modern storage capacity for goods and that attacks on logistics sites had increased.
Religious buildings and Christian organizations have been struck repeatedly since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. In a statement marking the war's fourth anniversary in February, the chair of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, Robert Řehák, said more than 800 religious buildings had been documented as damaged, roughly 100 of them reduced to rubble, and that at least 80 ministers of various faiths had been killed by deliberate targeting or indiscriminate bombardment. The Religion on Fire project, run by the Ukrainian NGO Workshop of Academic Religious Studies, has documented at least 742 damaged or destroyed religious sites and 11 religious educational institutions over the war's first four years.
The attack on the warehouse came five days after Ukraine's third National Prayer Breakfast was held in Kyiv, where more than 1,500 participants from 17 countries gathered on Aug. 23, as Christian Daily International previously reported. World Evangelical Alliance Secretary General Rev. Botrus Mansour, who prayed at the event on behalf of the global evangelical community, asked that supporters of Ukraine would not grow weary and would keep working for peace.
Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi told that gathering that Russian forces were destroying Ukrainian churches and persecuting religious communities in occupied areas.
Moscow rejects such accusations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in comments reported by TASS on Aug. 30 that Russian forces were hitting only military facilities.
