KYIV (OSV News): Ukraine’s religious leaders have appealed to Pope Leo XIV for his continued help in returning thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war, hostages and deported children, as deadly Russian attacks on Kyiv and other cities continued to claim civilian lives amid stalled global peace negotiations.
The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations [UCCRO] issued a letter to Pope Leo on August 26, thanking him for his “consistent stance in defense of a just peace, his support for ending the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and his efforts to address the humanitarian problems in Ukraine caused by the war,” according to the group’s website.
The letter came just a day ahead of massive Russian attacks throughout Ukraine on August 27-28, in which at least 19 people, among them four children, were killed in Kyiv alone, with others feared still trapped under rubble.
Russia hurled almost 600 drones and 31 missiles in the course of the attack, which Keith Kellogg, the special envoy of US president, Donald Trump, to Ukraine, described as “outrageous”, “egregious” and a threat to Trump’s peace pursuit in an August 28 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In a separate statement on the attacks, UCCRO said that they represented “criminal actions of the Russian regime, which once again confirmed the genocidal policy of the terrorist state.”
The Ukrainian people are enduring massive human losses, the destruction of cities and villages, the deportation and unlawful displacement of Ukrainian children, and are experiencing one of the gravest humanitarian catastrophes in Europe since the Second World War
UCCRO
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022 and continuing attacks initiated in 2014, has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
A number of human rights entities, including the United Nations, have documented systematic atrocities and violations of multiple international laws, including the Geneva and Genocide Conventions, the UN Charter, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
At least 19,546 Ukrainian children—and, by Russia’s own admission, as many as 700,000—have been forcibly transferred to Russian control, with many subjected to abuse, “patriotic reeducation,” militarization and adoption by Russian families.
“The Ukrainian people are enduring massive human losses, the destruction of cities and villages, the deportation and unlawful displacement of Ukrainian children, and are experiencing one of the gravest humanitarian catastrophes in Europe since the Second World War,” said UCCRO in its letter to Pope Leo.
In that message, UCCRO also stressed that “one of the most painful issues remains the detention of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages in captivity on the territory of the Russian Federation.”
The religious leaders also warned in their August 28 statement that “any support now revealed to the Russian Federation is the same as support for murderers and thieves, which entails obvious moral responsibility.
“The money earned from business with the Russian Federation is now stained with the blood of innocently murdered people, and this blood cries out to Heaven for just revenge,” the UCCRO said in its post-attack statement.
The group added, “We express our gratitude to all religious figures, believers of various denominations and people of good will for the support of the Ukrainian people, prayers for the cessation of Russian military aggression and the establishment of a just and sustainable peace for Ukraine and Europe.”
