CHURCH leaders in Ukraine have deplored a Russian missile attack that killed 20 civilians, half of them children, in President Zelensky’s home town.
“Preachers of the so-called Russian world seek to convince everyone that the modern Russian state is the only force protecting goodness and truth — that its Church, headed by the Moscow Patriarchate, is the only true Church of Christ, united with God,” the Primate of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), said.
“Yet as Orthodox Churches worldwide honoured the Blessed Virgin with due praise, this ‘Holy Russia’ launched a missile at a residential area and children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih. . . Is it through such actions that the Kingdom of God will be created?”
The Metropolitan preached on Sunday as three days of mourning were observed for victims of the Russian air strike, which took place last Friday during discussion of a US-brokered peace deal.
He said that “Holy Russia” had been killing Ukrainians daily with “drones, bombs, missiles, and other deadly weapons”, and warned that those who justified its crimes “by deed or inaction”, including those “dressed in church vestments”, would be “condemned as accomplices in sin”.
The Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said that Kyiv had also “woken up to explosions”, as other towns “burned again” at the weekend. The “most reliable builders and defenders of peace”, at a time of faltering international diplomacy, remained the country’s military servicemen.
“While the international community talks about a truce and ceasefire in Ukraine, the aggressor mocks these efforts and continues killing innocent people,” he said in a national message.
“Those innocently murdered have drunk the cup of suffering and death to the end — but there is hope in this for resurrection and eternal life. We embrace with our prayers all relatives and friends of the victims, wishing to bring them not just words, but acts of support and help, as God’s hands in these terrible circumstances.”
The news agency Ukrinform said that an Iskander cluster missile and several drones had exploded on Friday evening, killing 11 adults and nine children and injuring more than 70 others, as people walked in the streets of Kryvyi Rih.
It said that about 30 residential and educational buildings had been damaged, along with dozens of cars, in Russia’s most brutal single targeting of children since its February 2022 invasion.
The attack occurred as diplomats from Russia and the United States prepared for fresh negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday, and as the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, held phone talks with the Vatican’s British Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
A Vatican communiqué said that the “dialogue” had been “dedicated to the overall picture of world politics, with particular attention to the war in Ukraine”, and had included “some initiatives aimed at stopping the military actions” and facilitating prisoner exchanges.
The RC Bishop of Lviv, the Rt Revd Eduard Kava, said that the Kryvyi Rih attack, by “animals who consider themselves people”, had revealed “the whole truth” about Russia’s “terrorist state, which holds nothing sacred, recognises no values, and adheres to no rules and agreements”.
Meeting the Canadian ambassador, Natalia Tsmots, on Tuesday, Metropolitan Epiphany said that the attack had shown that there was “no real desire for peace on the Russian side”, and that a “just and lasting peace” would be secured only by “the constant strengthening of our state in all possible directions”.