Peace was officially shattered this week when Russian troops, aircrafts, and tanks crossed the border into Ukraine. Lauren Libby, president of Trans World Radio (TWR), says while Ukrainians may be running low on hope right now, Christian broadcasts continue in the entire region.
"Most of our broadcasting occurs from outside of the area," Libby details. "It's extremely high power -- 250,000 watts and half-million watt transmitters outside of the area -- so we're basically broadcasting from outside into the area."
TWR does have FM operations in Ukraine, but he expects the Russians to take them down.
"This is a time when radio really shines," Libby submits. "The digital media has been taken down, obviously, [as has] the internet for political reasons, so what we're doing is we're basically providing hope from the outside."
He believes God is moving in a dire situation.
"We believe the Lord can use this, and our goal is to maintain hope and to continue to broadcast hope into a situation that right now is pretty hopeless," Libby adds.
Dan Johnson, president of Christian Radio for Russia (CRFR), has a radio station in Odessa, Ukraine and says "chaos" is the word to describe the situation on the ground.
"At the moment, we have a skeleton crew at our station while the rest of our staff are out trying to scurry around and find food and water to hole up," he reports.
While he is unsure of how long they can stay on the air if Russia takes control of the area, he asserts CRFR will continue with the Christian message for as long as they can.
"There are Ukrainian tanks that are going up some streets and just going over cars. There's a lack of control, it seems, and people are really fearful of what to do," the CRFR president accounts.
The residents of Odessa who have the means to flee could be facing danger.
"People who are trying to get out of the city are leaving, but we're hearing reports that even if you got out and you tried to get across the border into Moldova, armed people are stopping cars on the roads that are trying to get to the border sites, and they're robbing them," Johnson relays. "There's a degree of lawlessness."
He says it is a genuine war, and people are afraid. But his radio operation's goal is to remind people in Ukraine and Russia that God is in control, despite the dangerous goings on around them.
