UKRAINE’s Greek Catholic Primate has warned that current enthusiasm about peace in Gaza and elsewhere is coinciding with a surge in Russian attacks on his country.
“Russia is again systematically destroying our energy infrastructure,” the Primate, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said in a video message on Monday.
“While heads of state talk about peace talks, there is an unprecedented escalation of the war, with a doubling of nightly Russian attacks. Multiple weapons, aimed primarily at peaceful civilians, are claiming new victims in Ukraine every day.”
The Archbishop’s words came as dozens of people were injured and at least four were killed in night shelling and drone attacks, as well as a glide-bomb strike on a hospital in Kharkiv.
He said that the latest “massive strikes” had inflicted a partial blackout in Kyiv. Ukrainians were now praying especially for energy workers, who “tirelessly restored” the power network to give people “light, warmth and the opportunity to live”.
The attacks left an Orthodox priest and a four-year-old girl dead at a church in the eastern town of Kostyantynivka, and prompted a fresh appeal for improved air defences from President Volodymyr Zelensky, as he made plans to attend a White House meeting with President Donald Trump this week.
Addressing European Bishops’ Conferences last week at Fatima, Major Archbishop Shevchuk said that Russian drone attacks had increased tenfold in the past year, and almost one quarter (23 per cent) of Ukrainian territory, an area twice the size of Portugal, was now dangerous because of mines and unexploded munitions.
During an address in Rome on Sunday, the Pope deplored the “new brutal shelling” in Ukraine, which had caused “the death of innocent people, including children”, and had left families “without electricity and heating”.
In a sermon last week at the Holy Trinity Monastery, Sergiev Posad, north-east of Moscow, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said that Christ had sent his country an “Orthodox head of state” in President Vladimir Putin, who needed “spiritual, prayerful support”, together with his government and military commanders, through daily “concrete actions”.
“Fear of God on the part of the authorities is the guarantee of our people’s well-being,” the Patriarch said. “No forces can shake the course our Fatherland has embarked on, truly uniting the heavenly and the earthly.”
