Battered Ukraine Wary of Wounded Russian Bear

The Russian bear is wounded, with Russia's economy crumbling as oil prices plummet.

Its vulnerable neighbor, Ukraine, puts the blame for this latest crisis squarely on Moscow, accusing Russian leaders of invading their territory and backing gunmen who now control large areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Kiev says Moscow wants to build a land corridor that connects the Russian mainland with the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine last March.

Now, with falling crude prices and Russia's economy teetering on collapse, some wonder if President Vladimir Putin will use this latest development to back down or venture deeper into Ukrainian territory.

Putin's Russian rebels have been meddling in Ukraine all year, leaving 4,000 people dead and 10,000 injured.

In eastern Ukraine, a fragile ceasefire is supposed to stop the bloodshed. That hasn't happened yet.

Meanwhile, for those like Tamara Dudnik living on the front lines, the past nine months have been a harrowing ordeal.

"I'm on the phone constantly connecting refugees with potential families who want to help," she said.

Dudnik is from the eastern city of Slavyansk. When pro-Russian rebels invaded this part of the country in April, she and her husband, prominent Ukrainian pastor Peter Dudnik, risked their lives to help those caught in the conflict.

"It started out very simply," she recalled. "Someone called my cell and asked if we could help get them out of a city that was under fire from rebels. We made some calls and got them out. Word spread about what we did and soon people were calling us from all over the region."

Every week since that first phone call in April, the Dudniks, with the help of CBN's Orphan's Promise and several Ukrainian churches, helped hundreds of families escape from rebel-held territories in the east.

"We are a lifeline for families in the east. Some of them call us saying, 'Save us, save us!'" Tamara Dudnik said.

For several months now, Orphan's Promise has been running a hotline connecting a stream of refugees coming out of the war zone in the east and the Crimean Peninsula with families and churches willing to help.

"Getting them out of the conflict zone was one thing, but then we had to find places for them to stay. We had to take care of their health needs, feed them, and get them warm clothes for the winter," Galyna Kucher, with Orphan's Promise, said.

More than a million people fled eastern Ukraine.

"Most of them left their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs," Kucher said. "They lost everything. They have nothing."

So for now, as winter sets in, the conflict -- which has internally displaced more than half a million people -- shows no sign of ending anytime soon.