The Protestant pastor who makes ‘rocket stoves’ for the front lines in Ukraine

In the village of Velyka Vilshanka, in the Kyiv region, prayers have been multiplying for a baby whose condition when it enters the world is unknown. The mother, 39-year-old Dana, has been admitted to a hospital in nearby Vasylkiv due to the high risk of a miscarriage. The father, 47-year-old Ihor, is the pastor at the Pentecostal church in Velyka Vilshanka. Dana is expecting his tenth child. They do not yet know if it is a boy or a girl. “The doctors are amazed that he or she is still alive,” says Ihor, with optimism over the child’s powers of endurance. “We want to have a big family and we accept all the blessings that God offers us,” he adds in the presence of his eldest daughter Nastia, 21, and the infant David, three.

But even amid so much uncertainty, Ihor still finds time to turn his huge hands to humanitarian tasks to help those in need. He has been doing so since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, distributing food and clothing and even opening the doors of his home to up to 34 people at a time, all refugees from the east of the country. “Whenever someone got stuck at a roadblock because the curfew had started, they were sent to our house,” he says with a smile. Now he dedicates his time to handcrafting, soldering iron in hand, what have become known as “rocket stoves.” These improvised devices allow for cooking with very little wood, they are resistant to wind and easily portable when disassembled, factors which are of considerable use to the Ukrainian military. “They’re called rocket stoves because that’s what they look like when they’re lit,” he explains. He has also been retrofitting hot water boilers for heating.

Pentecostalism, under the umbrella of the Protestant Church, emerged in the United States in the 19th century. Ihor received a donation from the US a few weeks ago. Deciding that it would be best put to use improving conditions for soldiers at the front during winter he intended to purchase field kitchens that operate without gas or electricity, but found that prices are soaring because of the energy crisis in Ukraine. The Russian military has been targeting infrastructure that provides water, electricity and heating for civilians with air strikes for several weeks and the cost of any equipment that will help people survive the winter has risen sharply. “Prices are crazy and I didn’t want to be one of them,” he says in reference to those taking advantage by hiking the cost of such apparatus.

After watching a tutorial on YouTube, Ihor decided he would not buy anything ready-made and set his hands to the task. “I am an outdoorsman. I can handle it,” he says, pulling down a safety visor as the sparks fly. He works swiftly, knowing that the power outage will be coming soon: the Ukrainian authorities have been rationing supply to ensure energy saving among the population.

Since he set up his workshop in September, Ihor has made 35 rocket stoves by patiently welding together the metal sheets he had cut up previously. He did the math. Each rocket stove he builds costs around 800 hryvnia (about $21). On the commercial market the devices retails at triple that price. “It’s better to round off the edges so they don’t cut anyone or get snagged on clothes,” he says as he applies the finishing touches to a new stove. In the yard, dogs bark and chickens run about next to the vegetable garden.

When the war began, the Kyiv region was the primary target of Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Velyka Vilshanka was spared from the fighting and occupation. At that time, Ihor turned to those most in need, whether civilian or military. The martial law ordered in Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion means that men aged between 18 and 65 are forbidden from leaving the country. There are some exceptions: One of the them is having three or more children. Ihor recalls that his own personal army of children was a passport to leave Ukraine immediately. “Together, my wife and I decided that we would not leave. Something told me this town was safe. For many local people, our family is the last hope and we could not leave them. If they saw us leave, they would have left too. So we stayed, and they stayed too.”

Igor speaks as though he is some kind of Messiah: 13 years ago, he and his family left Kyiv and moved to Velyka Vilshanka, 30 miles to the south of the capital. “We believed that these people needed God,” he says. It was a bold move for a Protestant to make such a leap of faith in a country where some 90% of the population belong to the Orthodox Church. “They thought we were satanists. We had a lot of difficulties at the beginning. They whispered about us and even threatened us. But they have come to know us as servants of God. The situation has improved now,” says Ihor while the electricity, as he predicted, cuts out shortly after 12pm. Nastia, who studies fashion design in Kyiv, hugs her father and says how happy she is in her family.

The Pentecostal pastor says time and again that he doesn’t understand how the war came to pass. “There are religious people who are blessing the occupation and I feel sorry for them,” he says. Beyond ultra-terrestrial considerations, there are practical reasons why the village has opened its doors to Ihor’s family: Six of his children attend the local school and represent 10% of the entire student intake. “Over these past 13 years, they have come to realize that we are not monsters,” he says with a smile.