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Southern California church teams up with Romanian group bringing aid to mothers and children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
QUICK FACTS:
- Influence Church of Anaheim Hills, California has partnered with ‘Logos Faith Church‘ (Facebook) located in the city of Baia Mare, Romania, just miles from the western Ukrainian border.
- Logos Faith is offering shelter and supplies to refugees fleeing the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
- Emma Birlea is part of ‘Women of Influence,’ a women’s group based in Influence Church dedicated to “Empower, Equip, and Educate women to be all God created them to be.”
- Emma’s father served for 25 years as founding pastor at Logos Faith. She and her family now attend Influence Church.
- “We are looking for people to donate supplies like mattresses and pillows and blankets,” Emma said in a video, adding that her group is specifically looking to acquire “heaters, personal use products, as well as a bus that they need for taking the refugees from the border into our campuses.”
- “Anything and everything is very welcome right now,” she said.
- Donors can earmark donations for this cause by selecting “Ukraine Relief” under the “Giving Type” tab after clicking this link.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
IMAGES FROM LOGOS FAITH CHURCH IN ROMANIA:
BACKGROUND:
- More than 1.7 million people have fled Ukraine, up from 1.5 million on Sunday, according to the U.N. refugee agency, The Associated Press reports. The agency claims some 4 million people may flee Ukraine if the conflict continues.
- On Feb 24, Russia began its large-scale “military operation” against Ukraine.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he launched the operation in order to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine as well as to protect the people of the two Donbass republics (Donetsk and Luhansk), which Russia recently recognized as sovereign entities.
- “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denies his government is committing genocide on its own population. “Russia has attacked Ukraine in a cowardly and suicidal way, like Nazi Germany did during World War II,” Zelensky said in an online briefing.
- In a later video address, the Ukrainian president said a “new iron curtain” was “lowering and closing Russia off from the civilized world.”
- Joe Biden’s White House characterizes Russia’s attack on Ukraine as both “unprovoked” and “unjustified.” “The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” Biden said in a speech. “This is a premeditated attack. Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months.”
