UKRAINIAN church representatives have voiced shock at the closure of foreign-aid programmes by the United States, announced on Monday as Russia pressed on with its three-year invasion.

“This international help has enabled Ukraine to defend itself; so this move is unimaginable,” the director of the Roman Catholic Caritas organisation in Kharkiv, Fr Wojciech Stasiewicz, said.

“It has been essential in enabling us to reach the neediest people, who make up most victims in this war, including those who’ve lost their homes, and their husbands and fathers at the front. If this decision goes ahead, it will have enormously harmful consequences”.

Fr Stasiewicz spoke as American officials confirmed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID), founded in 1961, had been closed down with immediate effect, suspending its $40-billion budget, along with 10,000 jobs.

He told the Church Times that no warning had been given of the sudden termination of USAID, whose support, backed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, had been vital for life-saving help provided by Caritas to villages and settlements close to the 930-mile front line.

Appeals for the resumption of aid came from church leaders in the US, who urged Christians to contact their elected representatives. “New administrations usually review ongoing programmes against their policy goals,” the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a joint statement with Catholic Relief Services.

“However, ceasing almost all humanitarian and development assistance during that time will have real impacts for human life and dignity and US national interests.”

On its now suspended website, USAID said that its support for Ukraine, amounting to date to $37.6 billion, has proved “pivotal” to its “economic and democratic future” and “Euro-Atlantic integration”.

It said that the US government “remains committed to the Ukrainian people as they continue to defend themselves from Putin’s onslaught”, and that autocrats worldwide were “watching whether the US, its allies and partners can sustain such resolve”.

Speaking on Monday, however, President Trump said that USAID was being run by “radical left lunatics”, who were getting away with “tremendous fraud”. Fears of an unjust peace have grown across Ukraine since President Trump’s electoral pledge to end the war through talks with President Putin, and are likely to be amplified by USAID’s closure.

In an appeal last week, Ukrainian church leaders in the US said that they counted on Mr Trump’s presidency to “mark a just end to the Russian global threat” and hold Moscow “accountable for numerous war crimes, the genocide of Ukrainians and crimes against humanity”.

In a sign of growing assertiveness, however, the Russian Orthodox Church has announced a fivefold increase in chaplains assigned to the “special military operation” in Ukraine, to maintain morale and counter a “sinful spirit of vengeance” among Russian troops.

The Tass news agency said that the additional clergy would be trained under a new “military-focused programme” at the Rostov Theological Seminary, in southern Russia. Orthodox figures, it said, had argued that “greater religiosity” among troops would “bolster their effectiveness against Ukraine” and “push Russia towards victory”.

At a meeting in Moscow on Monday, Putin thanked Patriarch Kirill on the 16th anniversary of his enthronement for his work “not only for Orthodox Christians in Russia but for the country as a whole”.

The Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Chernyshenko, also praised the Patriarch for the “huge number of churches” already built in “newly liberated territories” of Ukraine with government support, and for his part in “strengthening the faith and courage of soldiers for the speedy achievement of the victory for which you prayed and we together with you”.

The German-based Eastern Churches News Service (NOK) carried a new “confession of faith” last week by Russian Orthodox clergy opposed to the war, deploring the “frivolity” of church representatives who “use the name of God in their rhetoric” and “dictate which side He should be on in earthly conflicts”.