(OSV News): Sorrow, anger and renewed calls to support Ukraine have were issued by Ukrainian clergy following a massive 29 December 2023 attack by Russia. More than 40 people were killed and 160 wounded after a wave of close to 160 drones and missiles was unleashed on civilian targets across the country, including Kyiv and Lviv.
Two joint reports from the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights have determined Russia’s invasion constitutes genocide, with Ukraine reporting some 120,301 war crimes committed by Russia since February 2022.
In a statement issued immediately following the attacks, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Galicia, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, extended his “heartfelt condolences to all those who are burying their relatives who were killed by the Russian criminal hand.”
Archbishop Shevchuk said, “We send our love and deep concern to all the wounded, all those who have lost their homes, and who are grieving and crying. Lord, take the innocent victims into your hands and heal the wounds of Ukraine! You, who were born among us as a little child, wipe away the tears of Ukraine!”
In Lviv, where at least one person was killed and 15 injured, Archbishop Ihor Vozniak of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Lviv, said in a December 29 statement, “When the entire world glorifies the newborn Child, the enemy rages and kills the innocent.”
We send our love and deep concern to all the wounded, all those who have lost their homes, and who are grieving and crying. Lord, take the innocent victims into your hands and heal the wounds of Ukraine! You, who were born among us as a little child, wipe away the tears of Ukraine!
Archbishop Shevchuk
He denounced “the heinous terrorist attacks of the Russian military on the civilian population of our Ukraine,” saying, “the perennial enemy does not relinquish its intention to destroy us.”
In a December 29 statement, the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations—representing the various Christian, Jewish and Muslim bodies of Ukraine—categorically condemned the attacks.
The council called upon “all states of the world that declare respect for the value of human life and international law to condemn the actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, recognise Russia as a terrorist state, and provide Ukraine with the necessary means to protect life, including additional air defense equipment, aircraft, and all that is necessary for the defense and restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
In addition, it urged the “World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, and other international interfaith organisations to consider the issue of the moral and other forms of responsibility of the Russian Orthodox Church, which through all conceivable means supports the Russian aggression against Ukraine, incites ethnic and interfaith hatred, and, through preaching of the ideology of the ‘Russian world,’ incites genocide of the Ukrainian people.”
The council said, “In this context, we recall the example of the actions of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Republic of South Africa to justify apartheid, for which it was rightfully condemned by the international community and expelled from the World Council of Churches.”
Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church has told followers that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty [in Russia] washes away all sins.”
