RIVAL church leaders in Ukraine have welcomed the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, expressing hopes that his second term could affect the current conflict decisively.
“The new president has said he will end wars in the modern world — people are asking themselves how he will do this,” the Primate of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, Major Archbishop Svetoslav Shevchuk, said on Monday.
“There is much anxiety in our society as to whether this won’t be at the expense of new lives in Ukraine. We hope, however, that he will listen to our motherland’s voice and help us win this war.”
The message was published at the same time as Kyiv claimed to have killed or injured 1950 Russian troops in a single day while repelling a counter-offensive in the occupied Kursk region. Speculation mounted over President-elect Trump’s readiness to continue supporting Ukraine’s war efforts.
Speaking separately to Poland’s Catholic Information Agency, Archbishop Shevchuk said that the US election had suggested that “the extremely liberal political model is beginning to fail.” He feared that the international community would fragment, as the “validity of international law” was increasingly ignored by state actors.
In a message of “sincere congratulations” to President-elect Trump, Metropolitan Agafangel (Savin) of Ukraine’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church, the UOC, told him that his “brilliant victory” had “proved once again” that God was on his side.
“We hope this will improve the situation of millions of suffering believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is currently undergoing great trials and suffering, despite steadfast devotion to the people and state of Ukraine. We hope the UOC will rise again and continue, as before, its eternal mission with other denominations in Ukraine of nurturing interreligious and civil peace.”
New moves were made this week against the UOC, which was ordered to return its cathedral in Volodymyr to the State; and the trial continued of Metropolitan Feodosiy (Snegiryov) of Cherkasy on charges of collaboration with Moscow’s February 2022 invasion (News, 25 October).
Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church (OCU) made its statement at the weekend regarding the US election. The Chief Chaplain of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Metropolitan Kliment (Kush) of Crimea, said that Mr Trump had made “great efforts” to preserve the OCU during his 2017-21 first term; he counted on him to “assist Ukraine in achieving a just peace”.
In a social-media post from Kyiv, where Christmas and New Year celebrations have again been cancelled by the capital’s Defence Council, the OCU’s leader, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), invoked the Archangel Michael to help Ukrainians to defend themselves from “occupiers and servants of the Kremlin tyrant, the modern Antichrist, now terrorising and destroying the whole world”.