Instability in Ukraine cast a spotlight on the former Soviet republic’s minority Baptist religious population with the selection of interim president Oleksandr Turchynov, a veteran politician, author and lay preacher at the Word of Life Center in Kiev, which belongs to the Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine.
Turchynov, an opposition leader to deposed President Viktor Yanukovych and a one-time member of the youth organization of the Soviet Communist Party, became a Christian in 1998. He has a long record for advocacy of religious freedom, pushing for legislation including the return of church properties seized by the state under Communism and ending import taxes on Bibles brought into the country by religious organizations.
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