Ruslan KD has become a familiar face in the culture war of Christians pushing back against an increasingly godless culture. His YouTube channel has 625,000 subscribers. His videos range from all sorts of topics, from facing demonic influences, to interviews with former homosexuals, and discussions on the Shroud of Turin. Apart from his podcast, Ruslan is also an entertainer and influencer. But some of his fans may be surprised to find out that Ruslan’s early life was far from idyllic, and that he spent his formative years as an atheist.

As a young boy, Ruslan found himself and his family as homeless refugees. “I’m … ethnically Armenian. My father is full Armenian. My mother is adopted by an Armenian family in Azerbaijan — Baku. So, that’s the city we come from is Baku, right in the Middle East, off the Caspian Sea,” he told CBN News. After the Armenian genocide during World War I, life continued to be difficult for Armenians, with the rise of the Soviet Union putting Ruslan’s family at risk while in Russia. “And that is where we kind of saw some pretty gnarly … stuff of … soldiers coming to our house, people coming to our house, getting reports that we were Armenian. And my mom saying, ‘Hey, no, no, we’re not Armenian. We’re Russian.’ And to the point where our physical health was in danger.”

Ruslan came to the United States in 1991 when he was just six years old. His family, which had never been religious, joined the Armenian Orthodox Church, where Ruslan was baptized. But he had no faith of his own, especially after he was abused around the age of 7 or 8 by a group of teenage boys. “[They] ended up showing me same-sex porn and then re-enacting the things that they saw in the videos on me when I was a child,” said Ruslan of the abuse. The church’s lack of response to the allegations hardened Ruslan’s heart to the church. As his family life deteriorated (his mother fell into alcoholism and affairs with other men), so did Ruslan’s opinion of God and his own life. “[I felt] there is no God. And if there is a God, he does not love me. That led me down a spiral of getting arrested at the age of 11 for breaking into homes, attempting to be in a gang … I was really a troubled preteen at that point, smoking weed, selling weed, breaking into homes, just a complete derelict of a kid,” he said.

Thankfully, a mother of one of his friends, Sheree, saw her life radically changed by Christ after doing community service for legal troubles. Soon, Sheree had led most of the apartment complex where she and Ruslan lived to Christ. While spending time doing community service with Sheree and others, Ruslan heard the Gospel. “They started sharing the Gospel with me, and they would tell me things like, ‘You’re going to do great things for God someday.’ And I was like, ‘There’s no way.’ Long story short, I finished the community service hours, we moved … and the seeds just keep being planted.” In high school, he pursued a Christian girl, which meant going to church to see her. After a couple of years of hearing Christian messages and receiving Josh McDowell’s book “The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict” from his manager at Pizza Hut, Ruslan finally gave his life to Christ.

After seeing success as an independent musician and dabbling with YouTube, Ruslan began to be approached by his fans on his opinions of culture. It would eventually lead to his successful YouTube channel. Addressing the decline of Christianity in America, Ruslan stated it may be more of a revealing of the heart of America than an actual decline. “Perhaps the culture devolved because the faith that we had as Americans wasn’t really a faith anchored in Jesus.”