Can the Lord Intercede? "Pray that God embarrass the wicked, evil assault against Ukraine. Ask for God to embarrass the attacks of the enemy. Ask God to embarrass the demons.".

• Author: Chotka, David
• Position: RELIGION

MY background is 100% Ukrainian. Both of my parents spoke the language as their first, learned English by going to school, and had an accent until the day they died. There are 1,400,000 people like this in Canada--and, especially in the Prairie provinces, there are large populations with a direct line to that country now threatened by an unprovoked and cruel war against a familiar foe.

In 1932-33, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin created an artificial famine in East Ukraine. There was a less-than-average crop--and Stalin required all farmers to surrender then-lands to support a mass "collectivization." Those who resisted either were imprisoned or executed.

Rural farmers who wanted to feed their families were not allowed to keep their crops--and large portions of their expropriated harvest was removed forcibly and exported. Food was doled out in urban centers to those who cooperated with the state, while the agrarian countryside was given nothing.

Fifteen nations now have determined that this event was a man-made genocide. Because of the way records were kept, much of this history has been repressed, destroyed or buried in the graves of the victims.

Former Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yushchenko claims there were 20,000,000 deaths from this Soviet holocaust. Others say the number could have been as high as 10,000,000; no one has an exact tally. The conservative number is 3,500,000 dead. The high estimate from rigorous scholarship is that 7,000,000 perished by artificial famine--holodomor, a Ukrainian word derived from moritee holodom, to kill by starvation.

Perestroika and glasnost under Michael Gorbachev's deconstruction of the Soviet Union made the study of this event possible, though even now Russia denies that the murderous event was an intentional starvation due to mass land expropriation.

After Stalin starved or executed those farmers, he repopulated that land with Russians loyal to Moscow, not Ukraine. That brings us to the present day and Vladimir Putin's claim that large portions of the Ukraine belong to Russia--and now three generations of "Russian-descended" people in Eastern Ukraine claim it has belonged to their families for generations (three to be exact).

My family knew many who escaped that madness to resettle in Canada (and other nations). So, it was a great gift to me when, some years ago, I traveled on my very first mission to Ukraine--the land of my ancestors.

The church I was serving sent me to teach emerging pastors and church...