A PARISH in Norfolk is marking the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia with a special service and a series of charitable initiatives to show its support for the Ukrainian people.
“This has been a cause really bringing people together — not just churchgoers but people across the community,” said David Styles, communications officer for the Norwich diocese.
“While some people have become desensitised after four years of war, local Ukrainians have been heartened by many messages showing they’re not forgotten.”
Mr Styles told the Church Times that St Peter’s, Sheringham, had marked the anniversary with a memorial service. It had also organised collections of clothing, medical supplies, children’s toys and fire-fighting equipment.
The charity North Norfolk Aid for Ukraine had attracted “huge community support” throughout the conflict, he said, helped by local clergy who had made help for Ukraine “front and centre in their work”.
In a message delivered during visits by Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, and other Western leaders on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the invaders had expected to be met “with crowds waving flowers”, but instead had seen “lines at the [army] recruitment centres”.
“Every aid package, every sanction against Russia, every weapons shipment” had had to be “truly fought for”, he said.
Ukraine’s Council of Churches and Religious Organisations (UCCRO) said that the four-year war had seen brutal human rights violations and “targeted religious persecution” in Russian-occupied areas, as well as the mass abduction of Ukrainian children and “horrific treatment” of prisoners in a campaign of aggression facilitated by the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate and other religious centres.
“We express gratitude to everyone who contributes to strengthening Ukraine’s defence capability and helps bring this victory closer,” said the UCCRO on Tuesday. “We thank all international partners who are helping Ukraine defend freedom and its democratic future.”
Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles and tanks in the early hours of 24 February 2022. The war has left half a million people dead on both sides, and 9.6 million Ukrainians internally displaced or seeking refuge abroad.
In a message issued on Sunday, the Pope deplored the “tragic situation unfolding before the eyes of the whole world”, and said that the “urgent necessity” of peace must be “translated into responsible decisions”.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) welcomed what it described as “signs of some progress” in current trilateral peace talks in Geneva. It said that its 356 member-denominations were praying for justice for the victims of Russian aggression.
“After so much death and destruction, so much suffering, and so many violations of law and morality, this aggression must stop,” said the statement, which was signed by the WCC’s general secretary, the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay.
