Sojourner #025: On Ukraine And My Experience

“...and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

When Jake reached out to me and offered a platform to share about Ukraine and the work we do on the ground, I asked him if there was anything specific he wanted me to talk about - humanitarian efforts, Christian media projects, summer camps for displaced children, fighting false U.S. and russian narratives on social media… 

I was taken back by his response: “Just write the truth. Otherwise, the floor is yours.” 

The next morning, on my drive, I kept turning one thought over in my head - what does it even mean to tell the truth in a world where everyone has their own version of it? Where there’s no right or wrong, just “do what feels good,” “live your truth,” “you do you,” where everything is relative to how convenient or beneficial it is for you… And then, a phrase came to mind: “The truth will set you free.”

So if knowing the truth means experiencing freedom - do you feel free? 

As a Ukrainian, both of these realities - the fight for freedom and the need for truth, are painfully close to me. We long to be free. For the past 11 years (and, in fact, much longer), Ukrainians have been fighting for it, for our right to exist. Look at our history: genocides, Holodomor, the oppressive atheist regime of the USSR, the occupation of Crimea, and now full-scale invasion… 

But what I’ve learned is that fighting for freedom without truth is a losing battle. 

Look at Ukraine, or if that feels distant, look at your own life. Have you ever felt truly free while saying what’s expected, while going against your own values just to fit in? I haven’t. 

I’d see people donate backpacks for Ukrainian kids one day and the next, praise the current U.S. administration like they could do no wrong. I knew how those narratives hurt Ukrainians, how they twisted reality - but I bit my tongue. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to lose a donor. But in doing that, choosing to be careful instead of truthful, diplomatic instead of honest - I wasn’t trusting God. I was putting my hope in people, not in Him.

This phrase just kept coming back to me: “The truth will set you free.” I wanted to experience it, so I started practicing it. 

When The Truth Is Uncomfortable

When my American friends asked, I stopped making it easier to hear. I told them what we saw in Ukraine - liberated villages where people barely made it through russian occupation. I told them about my friends’ kids growing up without their dads, about families forced to flee, not once, but over and over again. I told them about the mass graves and war crimes. I told them what an imperialist regime is - how it erases, destroys, and takes everything in its way. And I challenged them not just to support Ukraine but to speak up - to call things as they are. To name the oppressor, to stand with the oppressed, and to understand that staying quiet while witnessing genocide is a choice. And choices have consequences. 

I lived most of my life in Ukraine, and even after moving abroad, I kept coming back. But nothing prepared me for what I saw when I returned during the war - the destruction russia left behind in the Kyiv region. And I’ll never forget the contrasts: 

Ruins, and children playing nearby. The sound of Shahed drones, and people setting up a produce market early in the morning. Grieving with my cousin after her husband was killed in the war and celebrating the birth of my nephew. War is a time of contrasts. 

The Truth About Ukrainians And russian Influence 

Ukrainians will never surrender to an oppressor. 

I felt it for the first time on Maidan in 2014. Eleven years ago, we stood face-to-face with the enemy. I was there, a university student, standing in the cold, protesting, refusing to accept a future dictated by russia. We had nothing but our voices, our bare hands, and Molotov cocktails. And yet, we stood our ground. We didn’t back down then. And here we are in 2025, still standing, still fighting, still refusing to surrender. 

Ukraine is not a nation that just takes hits and keeps quiet. We don’t exist to simply endure. We fight. We resist. We rise. Because we know exactly what we’re fighting for. No political games, no backroom deals, no sellout negotiations will change that. We will never kneel to oppressors. And we do not stand alone, God is on our side. 

The russian influence didn’t disappear overnight. Ukraine was under the USSR for decades, and the weight of that history is still there. I grew up speaking russian at home. Our culture, our language, our identity had been suppressed for generations. I knew I couldn’t undo history, but I could choose not to carry it forward in me. 

In 2017, I made a choice. I stopped speaking the language of the aggressor. Because I realized that if I didn’t, my children, born in a free Ukraine, would become the second generation to never truly know their own language. 

The Truth About The War 

The truth is - war is ugly. There is so much loss, and consequences we have yet to experience. I’m afraid to even think about what post-war Ukraine will look like. Not just the destroyed cities, but the people - how do you rebuild lives, families, and generations shattered by war? What happens when the war ends, but the trauma stays? 

The war makes you radical. You stop believing in neutrality. Pacifism makes no sense when you experience war. At first, we all wanted to believe in the Budapest Memorandum, in promises and agreements. But signed papers don’t stop missiles. You know what does? Someone on the frontlines risking their life for mine. 

The truth is, we live in constant fear - and yet, we have hope. 

I’ve talked to displaced families, and somehow, the ones who have lost the most are often the ones who hold on to hope the strongest. I wanted to tell you their stories, stories of children affected by war, and my family, who is in Ukraine, because I know that would move you, make you feel their pain, and make you want to help. But if I’m honest, that would be manipulation. 

So instead, I want to tell you my story. It’s not a story of a displaced person. It’s not a story from the frontlines. It’s just my honest experience.

And by no means am I pretending that I’ve lived this war the way those in Ukraine have. I haven’t spent months in basements, I haven’t had to flee my home with nothing but a backpack. 

But every time we went back over the last three years, we stepped into it - the silence of destroyed villages, the grief in fresh graves, the resilience in people’s eyes. Enough to know this war isn’t just something I follow on social media. 

I called my parents at 4:00 AM and told them that russia was bombing cities all across Ukraine. I couldn’t reach my brother. That night, he was on his way back from the front lines after delivering supplies. The war didn’t start for us in 2022; it’s been going on since 2014 when russia occupied Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Now, it’s a full-scale invasion. 

I was crying. I was angry. I felt completely helpless. What was I supposed to do, sitting an ocean away, while my family and my country faced a war no one could stop? It took me two days to pull myself together, and in that moment, I made one decision - one that didn’t just shape the next three years, but, I think, my entire life. I looked around. I was sitting in our little rental apartment. We didn’t have much. But I had one thing. My voice. And I promised myself I would use it. 

Meanwhile, russia kept threatening with nuclear attacks. I remember sitting in our apartment, tired from no sleep, scrolling through my emails when I saw a string of notifications from my mom. She had sent me every important document they had - passports, IDs, everything, all their media work. No explanation. No words. Just attachments. She wanted to make sure I had access in case something happened to them. I just sat there, staring at the screen, trying to process what that meant. That’s when it hit me. The war wasn’t coming. It was already there. 

Then, in the weeks that followed, while most in Ukraine, including my family, were surviving nights in cold, wet basements, running out of food, and checking in whenever they could, for me and my husband, it became a season of action. 

When my town and territorial defense forces needed supplies, I wanted to go. I wanted to be there, to do something, to help. But my husband and his friends went instead. They told me it wasn’t safe for me. So I did the only thing I could, I asked for help. 

I put out a post on social media and created an Amazon wishlist. I don’t have a huge following, but that post reached over 60,000 people. And once people found out my husband was going to Ukraine, they started sharing the link like crazy. Within days, packages were arriving nonstop - Amazon boxes were stacked in our tiny apartment, in our friends’ homes, and in a warehouse our friend’s business let us use for packing. 

At that moment, I felt it - every connection I’d ever made in my life was showing up. Every conversation, every relationship, every person who had ever crossed my path, somehow, in some way, was now part of this. I did not feel alone. 

Nick flew to Poland and crossed the border into Ukraine with 46 suitcases stuffed with essentials - water purifiers, tourniquets, headlamps, and MREs. 

We saw the need and couldn’t just sit still. We started speaking at events, hosting fundraisers, using every possible channel, including social media, to raise awareness and tell people the truth. We didn’t wait for the right moment or for when we felt ready. Nothing prepares you for war. Nothing prepares you to fight for the truth. Every opportunity that came in front of us, we took. 

I made a commitment - to speak up, to tell the truth. Not the version from news headlines, not filtered through political agendas, but the truth straight from my family in Ukraine, living the war in real-time, not watching it on a screen. 

The truth of Mariupol. The truth of Bucha. The Truth. 

Living The War, Not Just Watching It 

No one will care about Ukraine as much as Ukrainians. So, we’re not waiting for the war to end to start rebuilding. It starts now. It’s not just about the future. It's about what we do right now, in the middle of a war. That’s why we’ve been on the ground as much as we have.

Close to 100 tons of supplies - clothes, essentials, and aid were sent from the U.S. to my hometown, a place that became a refuge for thousands of displaced people. But bringing aid wasn’t just about logistics, it was about showing up, standing side by side with those who had lost everything. 

We kept coming back. I remember staring out of a hotel window, watching Iranian drones get shot down in the night sky, knowing that the next morning, we’d be out there again, doing whatever we could. 

We found moments of joy in the middle of loss. We were a part of summer camps for displaced children, where laughter still existed, even when everything else had been taken from them.

And then, there was grief. Funerals of friends I never got to attend, learning how to carry loss from an ocean away. But war doesn’t give you time to sit with grief for too long, because there’s still work to do. So we kept going. Nights spent crossing the border on foot, sometimes dragging 11 suitcases alone, because people needed what was inside. 

We met the ones left behind. Home visits, bringing Christmas backpacks to kids who had lost their dads to war. Knowing that nothing could fill the absence, but still wanting to bring even a small piece of hope. And we weren’t alone. The community kept showing up. We brought a team of brave American volunteers (the youngest member just 16 years old) who flew across the world to stand with us, to help. 

A trip to Zaporizhzhia, near the front lines, delivering food bags to a recently liberated village, was one I will never forget. We were escorted by the Ukrainian military because we were only 7 km from the frontline. Artillery echoed in the background as we spoke with people who had survived months under russian occupation. 

No electricity. No water. Nothing. 

We spent a day there. They are still there. Living under constant attack. One of the houses we stopped at had been hit by a missile just the day before. When we arrived, the men were already patching up the roof, because for them, life goes on. 

The Work That Matters 

While we bring food, water, and essentials, my family’s ministry, The Bible Today, brings something just as critical - truth. From the first months of war, when survival was the only focus, now back to Christian media production, back to our mission. The work has shifted from urgent humanitarian aid to something just as critical: answering the deep, unspoken questions Ukrainians are asking. 

“Where is God in all of this?”

“What is justice?”

“Why do the wicked seem to prosper while the righteous suffer?”

“Why is the world so slow to act?” 

My parents' ministry, The Bible Today, kept recording interviews, sharing truth, reminding people that God has not abandoned Ukraine. 

Solar Audio Bibles recorded during the war in my parents' studio were sent to those on the front lines, to soldiers, to people living near the war zone. I’ve met people who told me they listened to them every single day because that was the only source of hope they had left. 

My brother kept driving (close to 200,000 km since the beginning of the war) to get supplies into the hardest-hit areas and bring the message of hope. And now, he’s not just delivering aid, he’s building something lasting. He’s investing in Ukraine’s future by creating jobs, ensuring that people have the means to rebuild their lives, not just survive the war. 

And in places where life expectancy is measured in weeks, sometimes days, this is the work that matters. Because one day, the missiles will stop. The headlines will fade. The world will move on. And what will be left? The people. 

That’s why I’m investing everything I have into making sure that when the war is over, when evil has been defeated, there is something left to rebuild upon. That’s why my parents are investing their lives into something no missile can destroy - the truth that sets people free.

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Photo Gallery: (Click on images for full resolution)

About the Author:

Yulia Clack and her brother, Andrii Chornomor

I grew up in Ukraine, studied linguistics in Kyiv, then moved to the U.S. to study at Highlands College in Birmingham, AL. After college, I returned to Ukraine to join my parents’ media ministry, The Bible Today. During the same time, my brother and I started a small coffee roasting business, Sibs Coffee. It has since grown into a roastery, bakery, and 4 coffee shops. One of them we opened in the middle of the war. 

From the start, Sibs was a place for community, where we hosted English clubs, workshops, and later, when the war began, it turned into a humanitarian hub. One of our coffee shops even served as a bomb shelter. We continue to focus on helping people rebuild by providing jobs in the middle of the war and supporting our country's economy. Since 2019, my husband and I have been living in the U.S., traveling back to Ukraine when we can. My life now is built around two things I believe in most - sharing the Gospel (through media) and growing Sibs.

The Bible Today: A Christian Media Organization

The Bible Today (TBT) is a Christian media organization with over 25 years of experience in creating and distributing original media content. Their mission is to connect global Biblical values with topics and questions relevant to everyone today. They aim to guide people toward the truth that transforms lives and builds the future.

The Christmas Backpacks Ukraine Project - 2025

Humanitarian Efforts

Traveling To The Donetsk Region - December 2023

Working In Nikopol - February 2024

The American Team Recap - Summer 2024

Visit The Bible Today (TBT) Website here, and visit the (English) Youtube Channel here.

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