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Izyum grave attributed to Russian ‘genocide’

23 September 2022

Metropolitan condemns Russian atrocities in Ukraine

Alamy

A mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, on Monday

A mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, on Monday

CHURCH leaders have deplored evidence of Russian atrocities in areas recaptured by Ukraine’s armed forces, as snap plebiscites were announced in occupied regions to speed their annexation by Moscow.

“We are seeing ever more manifestations of systematic genocide: a consequence of preaching the ideology of a Russian sphere,” the Primate of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), said.

“We chose the vector of European development for Ukraine, wishing to belong inseparably to European civilisation. So, the enemy decided to enslave us — or, more correctly, to destroy us.”

The Metropolitan spoke during a weekend meeting with visiting Roman Catholic bishops from France, as investigators gathered evidence of war crimes in eastern Ukraine, including more than 400 unmarked graves at Izyum.

Meanwhile, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said that more than 30 cities in Ukraine were currently without water, energy, and heating, because of deliberate attacks on critical infrastructure in the approach to winter, and accused Russia’s invading forces of imposing a “kingdom of death”.

“What is happening in the Kharkiv region, where victims of the Russian aggressor are exhumed near the city of Izyum, causes great pain,” Archbishop Shevchuk said in a message on Tuesday. “Horrible images of torture, abuse, and mass murder unfold before our eyes, as the enemy intensifies repression against the civilian population, forcing captured people to kill their brothers and sisters.”

Speaking last weekend, President Zelensky said that prosecutors were still finding mass graves in towns reoccupied during Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

Western governments condemned plans by pro-Russian politicians for the holding of urgent referendums today, to forestall Ukraine’s possible recapture of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions by having them incorporated into the Russian Federation.

Speaking after a Kyiv liturgy, the President of the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, said that Ukrainians were “fighting for the bright idea of what a nation is”, and paid tribute to their “great will to live in freedom, justice, and truth”.

On his fourth mission to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, the prefect of the Vatican’s Charity Dicastery, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, came under fire last weekend while delivering aid near Zaporizhzhia, and said that he had seen “bodies of tortured people, killed out of hatred”, during a later visit to the Izyum graves.

Meanwhile, during talks on Monday with Metropolitan Epiphany, the UK’s ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, pledged continued support for the country’s “democratic development, independence, and territorial integrity”.

In a message on Monday, Archbishop Shevchuk said that “heavy fighting” was continuing along the whole eastern and southern front.

Speaking on Monday at the mining town of Norilsk, however, Patriarch Kirill, in a speech posted on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website, called on young Russians to “take over the duty of serving the Fatherland and preserving the Orthodox faith. . . Those scare-mongers should be brought here and placed in the conditions where you work, so they can look in your faces and see your power — the power of will and spirit. Then they would think again as to whether it is worth offending the Russians”.

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