UKRAINIAN Churches have marked the second anniversary of Russia’s assault on their country with appeals for a realistic understanding of the conflict and continued international support.
“It’s been ten years since Russia unleashed its deliberately planned brutal and bloody war — hatred should be called hatred, while murder is murder and war is war,” the Primate of the Ukrainian independent Orthodox Church (OCU), Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), said in a social-media post this week.
“In the 21st century, an authoritarian country, with over half a million troops and destructive weapons, attacked another peaceful, independent state, violating all international rules and agreements. Terror, destruction, and extermination continue round the clock, as Russia pursues its planned genocide of a free, democratic people.”
The message was published as services took place nationwide to commemorate the second anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, and the tenth anniversary of its forced annexation of Crimea and occupation of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Metropolitan Epiphany said that Russia had talked of “liberating”, “helping”, and “protecting” the local population, while many Ukrainians had initially failed to grasp the full impact of what was occurring.
“Lies disarm and make people vulnerable, whereas the truth, however bitter, should be spoken and warned about openly,” he said. “It’s important to call things by their real names, to speak the truth, reject lies, and avoid fear and deception — in the eyes of the international community, Russia has committed a great crime against the Ukrainian people.”
The Metropolitan issued his appeal as Russian forces secured the newly captured town of Avdiivka, and launched fresh missile and drone attacks this week. The European Union announced a 13th package of sanctions amid continuing Ukrainian complaints of dwindling military support.
Ukraine’s Greek Catholic bishops said that “crimes by the Russian state and Church” had left “no room for compromise”, and that the international community had made a “great mistake” in enabling Moscow to construct a new “hybrid totalitarianism”.
“This war bears all the features of a neo-colonial war, with clear signs of genocide — the destruction of Ukrainianness has become the Russian leadership’s political programme, with a mania indicating the unhealthy state of Russian society,” the bishops said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Modern Russian totalitarianism does not pretend to have a positive content and coherent theory. It is the propaganda of nihilism in its worst forms, which seeks mankind’s moral corruption and dehumanisation, undermining faith in any moral principles and tempting its subjects to commit violence against others with impunity.”
International efforts have continued to deter Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament from enacting a law banning Orthodox communities that maintain jurisdictional ties with Moscow, which has been portrayed by Russia as religious persecution.
In a statement on Monday, the Moscow Patriarchate said that Ukraine’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church, the UOC, had spoken of “numerous violations of believers’ rights in Ukraine”. It went on to say that the Ukrainian government was “disseminating false information” and “trying to hide its violations” from world opinion.
Ukrainian MPs confirmed this week, however, that work was continuing on the planned Bill to ensure its conformity with European Commission requirements.
Ukrainian appeal courts rejected legal appeals this week by Metropolitans Ionafan (Yeletsky) of Tulchyn, and Feodosiy (Snegiryov) of Cherkasy, who are among dozens of UOC clergy convicted or facing charges for supporting the Russian invasion.
In a statement last weekend, Metropolitan Epiphany’s independent OCU said that it would seek to draw attention to the Russian Orthodox Church’s complicity in crimes in occupied Ukrainian territory, after one of its priests, the Revd Stepan Podolchuk, was summarily shot near Kherson.
In their declaration, the Greek Catholic bishops of Ukraine said that the Russian Orthodox Church was “trying to fill the ideological vacuum left from the fall of Communism”, using religion as a political tool to “strengthen state power”.
Patriarch Kirill’s contribution to the “propaganda of war” conformed, they said, with the Church’s “tradition of ideological service” and “servility towards those in power”. They said that no compromise could be reached in the conflict “if one of the parties denies the very existence of the other”.
“Ukrainian society has long tried to convey to the international community that a new aggressive ideology is emerging in Russia, which is a mixture of resentment, nationalism, and pseudo-religious messianism,” the bishops said.
“The Moscow Patriarchate’s role in creating and promoting this ideology with a quasi-religious spirit is now well-known and indisputable, portraying Russia as Christianity’s last bastion on earth, standing against the forces of evil.”
In a statement after the Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit to Ukraine (News, 16 February), Christian Aid said that 14.6 million Ukrainians currently needed humanitarian assistance, and millions were living in damaged homes and buildings unprotected against the harsh winter. The charity urged Western aid donors “not to give up on the people of Ukraine”.
The diocese in Europe is still funding refugee-support projects in co-operation with the USPG; but the small Anglican community in the parish of Christ Church, Kyiv, was still appealing for prayers.
“The outcome of the Ukraine war is of profound importance to the future of our European continent — the Ukrainian people are paying the price of this war in blood, tears and trauma”, the Bishop in Europe, Dr Robert Innes, said in the diocesan announcement.
“For them, this is an existential struggle, and I urge everyone to continue supporting Ukrainians, whether in Ukraine or in other host countries, by whatever means they can.”
Ukraine’s Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, which groups Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant leaders, as well as Jews and Muslims, paid tribute to the population’s “heroic resistance” and the support provided by “international partners”, in a message on Monday. It also announced plans for a nationwide campaign of prayer and fasting from 1 to 3 March.
