Her parents took her to church when she was little, and she was there often. In the summers, Ruslana went to Christian camps. Ruslana said that her parents’ influence and testimony was winning her over to a life of faith and belief in Jesus. She always believed in God, she recalled. She saw her need for a personal relationship with God and became a Christian in 2005 at the age of twelve. Her parents were very happy about her personal decision to follow Jesus. But Ruslana waited to be baptized till 2009, as the Baptist church would not baptize people under the age of sixteen. As she became a teenager, she attended youth retreats and camps. She eventually became a leader in these summer camps, working with children and youth.
After finishing high school in Pervomaisk, Ruslana began her studies at Kyiv Theological Seminary (KTS). She pursued these studies in youth ministry for three years, from 2010-2013. It was a non-residential program, so the students would come in for module classes every two or three months, living on campus for a week of classes. Due to the outbreak of war, she was not able to finish her degree there. She also pursued some training in Pervomaisk as a hair stylist, but could not finish it, either, as the outbreak of war interrupted every aspect of life.
After each study period at KTS, Ruslana said she came home with new encouragement and passion and vision for ministry. Her desire to serve God grew ever more. She had the opportunity to serve in the youth group of the church, and also in the youth club JAM, (Jesus And Me). Ruslana became a leader in JAM. Almost every evening there were church-centered activities in Pervomaisk. Ruslana was part of the young adults group and she sang in the choir.
As a teenager, Ruslana had cleaned houses and babysat to earn money. Eventually, she and her sister started their own business. It was a greenhouse business growing and selling fresh vegetables. She became creative in her customer support and delivered her goods to local grocery stores. They had developed business plans and dreamed of extending their acreage, planting more vegetables and building more greenhouses. But the war put an end to all these plans as well.
She met her future husband Anton for the first time at a summer camp in 2010. At the time, she was sixteen years old and Anton was twenty-nine years old. Anton was not yet a believer in Jesus Christ, but God was working in his heart and in his life. When camp was over, Anton left and enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program in a city far away, and Ruslana went back to being a business woman. They did not see each other for four years.
Anton completed rehab and became a Christian. God changed his heart completely and called him into ministry. Anton came back to Pervomaisk and joined the church, working with Elisey Pronin. Ruslana and Anton’s friendship blossomed into love, and over time they planned to get married. Anton was then serving in the rehabilitation center, a ministry of the church, where he had come to faith in Christ. In anticipation of a future ministry together, Anton had bought some land near the rehabilitation center so that he and Ruslana could live and work nearby, he in the center, she in her greenhouse business. They had many plans and were anticipating the future as any young happy couple in love would do.
On July 16, 2014, Ruslana was at the last service in the church in Pervomaisk. Very few people attended this service, she remembered, because many people had already left the town due to the increasing danger all around. The news about the war had been getting worse and worse. During this church service, bombs fell on houses in the city, and the house of Ruslana’s neighbor experienced a direct hit. They found out about the bomb damage after the service.
On Monday, July 17, 2014, Ruslana’s grandmother moved into the home Ruslana shared with her parents and siblings. This grandma had lived in a neighboring city where the bombing already was in full force. Ruslana had planned to go to work for a family that day, doing house cleaning. As she approached this family’s house, she found out that soldiers had simply annexed the family’s car without any reason or any legal authority.
Ruslana remembered that on that Monday, airplanes came flying very low over the city of Pervomaisk, and the soldiers on the streets started shooting into the sky, aiming for the planes. People who were simply out walking the streets and sidewalks of the city started running as the soldiers opened fire at the planes. No one knew what was going on, or who was shooting at whom.
The circling airplanes were the Ukrainian army, but the city of Pervomaisk was already occupied. How did this happen? The citizens of Pervomaisk had not realized that their city was occupied, because the soldiers hid themselves in homes and stores. But when the airplanes arrived and scanned the situation on the ground, the occupiers came out of their holes like a horde of ants and were suddenly everywhere, Ruslana said, shuddering from the memory.
People started to hide in their apartments, and fear gripped everyone like ice, Ruslana said. She hid in the basement of their house, together with her parents and her grandma. There was no cooking that day – no one was hungry; they only heated water for tea. She did not realize what was happening outside nor the extent of the damage. Later, she realized that this day was the beginning of a war which would force her away from her hometown forever.
During this first week of the war, it was dangerous to walk on the streets. Few people ventured out. Most were hiding, afraid for their lives. Ruslana went out once to buy food. On her way home to the safety of her parents’ house, two soldiers stopped her and interrogated her. They wanted to help her carry the bags of food, but Ruslana was so scared that she simply ran away from them to the safety of her shelter. Her grandmother was very frightened during these days, and even refused to go down into the basement. It took a lot of convincing to get her grandma into the cellar for protection from air raids and bombs, Ruslana remembered.
On Tuesday, July 18th, Ruslana’s father said that the family should leave the city, but that he would stay behind to protect their property. Ruslana did not want to go and leave her dad behind by himself. She admitted in the interview that she can be very strong-willed, and she did wind up staying with her dad, while her mother and grandma left the city in an evacuation convey. Ruslana’s older sister had left the city a week before the war broke out, visiting relatives in another part of Ukraine. Her younger brother had left two weeks earlier for a Christian summer camp in Kyiv, called Word of Life. Ruslana’s older brother was married and lived with his wife in another city of Ukraine, away from the war zone. And her other sister had already moved to Poland with her husband. So, they were all safe and accounted for. That was a great blessing, Ruslana said.
When the war had started in another town, Slovyansk, everyone had thought, “Oh, Pervomaisk is so small and insignificant; war will not come to us.” People were expecting that the war would be over in two days. Bombing started in neighboring cities, but the Ukrainian army moved in and freed those cities. “The same thing will happen in Pervomaisk, too,” Ruslana and her dad thought and so they stayed. They barricaded themselves at home, and when the bombs fell, they were hiding in the basement. When the bombing would stop for a while, they would sneak up to look at the damage and return to their apartment with great anxiety. This went on for a whole week. Once, when Ruslana went outside, the impact of a bomb pushed her back into the wall. Her dad felt terribly responsible for the danger she was in, and he cried out, saying, “Why did I not make you leave?!”