CHURCH leaders, condemning Russian drone incursions into Poland and Romania, have urged NATO to stand firm against Moscow’s provocations.
“Russia is seeking to export war to other European countries and testing the strength of global resistance,” the Greek Catholic Primate of Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said at the weekend.
“Stopping the war is possible only when we act together in unity, and we thank all those fighting for peace here in Ukraine and across the world. . . Peace across our continent is not a given, but something that needs protecting.”
The Major Archbishop was reacting to last week’s Russian drone attack on Poland, which was followed by a weekend drone overflight into Romania.
He said that Ukrainian Christians felt “special solidarity” with their NATO neighbours, after a week of “unprecedented Russian aggression against a united Europe”.
The Russian attack was also criticised by the Polish Primate, Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno, in Poland, who said that peace required “human action across multiple areas of life”.
“Current provocations are not only affecting Ukraine or the Holy Land — they are also affecting us,” Archbishop Polak told an international conference in Gniezno. “If there were any doubts about the need to seek paths of peace, these have now been dispelled.”
A total of 19 Russian drones, penetrating 200 miles into Polish territory, were shot down by Polish, Dutch and Italian planes, backed by German-operated Patriot air defence systems.
The President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, said that “full consequences” should be drawn from the overnight assault, while the country’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, also condemned the “large-scale provocation” at an emergency government meeting, and formally invoked consultation procedures under Article 4 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty.
A further Russian drone incursion into Romanian airspace led to the scrambling of F-16 fighter jets, and was similarly condemned as reckless and irresponsible by NATO and European Union leaders.
The attacks coincided with continued mass Russian strikes on Ukraine, which have killed and maimed dozens of civilians since President Putin’s Alaska summit with President Trump last month.
The Kyiv government has ordered new measures to secure cultural heritage sites, after drones damaged landmark Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Resurrection, Sumy, as well as historic churches in Nikopol, Hlukhiv, Volochysk, and Yunakivka over the past week.
It also published protocols this week for the reinterment of fallen Ukrainian service personnel in a series of official military cemeteries, including a National Memorial Cemetery at Hatne, near Kyiv, which is expected to accommodate up to 160,000 graves.
Preaching on Sunday at Ternopil, the Primate of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), said that he remained confident that Russia’s “empire of evil” would be “struck down”, while those who had given their lives would “rise from the dead at the end of history and receive a due reward from God”.
At the Gniezno conference, Major Archbishop Shevchuk also warned against “peace at any price”, and said that a final end to the war presupposed “truth and justice for victims, restoration of international law, and accountability for criminals”.
“True peace is a space of dignity and freedom — without such values, no peace agreement will create proper conditions for human life. True peace has nothing to do with pacifism and can never mean appeasing the aggressor and pacifying the victim — such a peace would signify that might is right, and merely foreshadow an even worse war in future.”