PATRIARCH Kirill of Moscow has accused Ukrainian troops of killing civilians and targeting churches during the shock incursion into western Russia.
“With great emotional pain and deep concern, I received news of the significantly worsened situation in the Kursk region in connection with the crossing of the Russian Federation’s state border by Ukrainian troops, as a result of which civilians, including women and children, were killed and wounded by shelling,” the Patriarch said in a statement.
He also alleged that “targeted attacks were launched against churches and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church”. At the same time, more Ukrainian churches were reported to have been destroyed or damaged in Russian drone strikes and shelling this week, including the UOC’s Assumption Cathedral, in Kherson, which was hit for a second time.
The Patriarch’s message was published as Ukrainian forces consolidated control over dozens of villages after launching surprise attacks last week on the Russian regions of Kursk, Briansk, and Belgorod.
Metropolitan Herman (Moralin) of Kursk & Rylsk instructed parish priests to co-ordinate help for hundreds of wounded soldiers and civilians, and called on “all Orthodox Christians” to “pray earnestly for victory”.
He said that the abbot and monks at the recently restored 17th-century St Nicholas Belogorsky Monastery, near Sudzha, had been forced to leave after the monastery, together with several churches near Belgorod, was hit during Ukrainian drone strikes.
On Tuesday, the Moscow Patriarchate said that it had set up a hotline for refugees, and had delivered 20 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Kursk, while also sending icons from the main cathedral of the Russian armed forces, the Cathedral of the Resurrection, in Moscow, for use in a religious procession against Ukrainian forces.
Russia declared a state of alert and set up temporary shelters for some of the 120,000 people forced to flee the Ukrainian cross-border operation on 6 August. Kyiv said that it had now occupied 380 square miles.
In a social media post this week, President Zelensky said that the aim of the operation had been to “bring a just peace closer” by targeting sites used by Moscow to launch attacks on Ukraine. He said that his forces were still advancing “despite difficult and intense battles”.
The surprise incursion coincided with new demands for a ban on Ukrainian Orthodox communities that maintain ties with the Russian Church, under a government-backed law set to be debated in Kyiv’s Verkhovna Rada on 21 August.
In an apparent reference to the draft law, first tabled in January 2023, President Zelensky told Ukrainians in a televised message last weekend that he was considering “a decision that will strengthen Ukrainian spiritual independence” and “deprive Moscow of the last opportunities to limit the freedom of Ukrainians”.
The Ukrainian security service, the SBU, said that it had charged two more Orthodox priests with treason, bringing the number of criminal cases brought against clergy from the Moscow-linked UOC to more than 100.
The Primate of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), visited the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople, with state officials on Tuesday, for what, Ukrainian media said, had been discussions of a possible new exarchate, or province, for UOC members wishing to break with Moscow.
And the government of the Czech Republic, which currently hosts 361,000 Ukrainian refugees — Europe’s largest number relative to a national population — ordered the deportation last week of the Revd Mykola Lishchenyuk, the Moscow Patriarchate’s chief representative. The Czech government referred to security concerns.
Russian Orthodox delegates were also expelled from Bulgaria in September 2023 (News, 10 November 2023), and Metropolitan Evgeniy (Reshetnikov) of the Moscow-linked Estonian Orthodox Church was refused a visa extension in February.
A UNICEF report this month said that child casualties from the war had increased by 40 per cent in the first seven months of 2024: 633 children were now confirmed dead and 1551 injured since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
“More than two years of destruction and displacement, violence, separation from family members and friends, as well as disrupted schooling, healthcare, and social services, have led to a mental-health and learning crisis among Ukraine’s children,” UNICEF said.
In a social-media message on Monday for his country’s annual Youth Day, Metropolitan Epiphany said that young Ukrainians had been “forced to grow up very early”, and were preoccupied with “adult problems” and “special obligations”. He urged them not to allow the evil of war to “kill bright hopes and the desire to do good and seek justice”.