CHURCH leaders in Ukraine have accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians and children with drones and missiles, after a mass post-Easter attack killed at least 17 and injured dozens more.

“The Russian terrorist state continues to shell Ukrainian cities, as well as our country’s residential areas and energy infrastructure,” the Council of Churches and Religious Organisations (UCCRO) said in a statement.

“God’s judgement and retribution for this innocent blood will inevitably fall on the Russian perpetrators and those who support them. Likewise, there can be no statute of limitations on the international condemnation of crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Federation.”

The UCCRO was reacting to strikes last week, which killed a Baptist minister in Zaporizhzhia and nine residents of an apartment block in Odesa.

It said that the overnight assault, after a brief Easter ceasefire, had taken place at one of the “most sacred and solemn times for millions of Christians”, and thanked all those showing solidarity with Ukraine “in this dark time of renewed attacks”.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church confirmed that dozens of drones had slammed into the historic centre of Odesa, in what it described as a “crime against humanity”. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian embassy in the United States named the Baptist minister as the Revd Ruslan Utyzukh, and said that 300 people had been attending a prayer meeting at his House of the Gospel church when it was hit by a KAB-1500L laser-guided bomb.

Speaking in Angola on Sunday, the Pope said that he was “deeply saddened” by the “escalation of shelling”, and called for a new ceasefire and return to dialogue.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) said that it had received “updates on the current situation” during an online meeting on Monday with UCCRO leaders under their chairman, the Rt Revd Sándor Fábián of the Transcarpathian Reformed Church.

The WCC said that its general secretary, the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, had “expressed strong solidarity with the churches and people of Ukraine”; he outlined plans for a Global Prayer for Peace and summer “solidarity visit” by representatives of the WCC’s 356 member Churches.

Preaching last week in the Dormition Cathedral, in the Kremlin, however, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said that churches in Kyiv, “the mother of Russian cities”, were just “temporarily occupied by schismatics”. He urged Ukrainians to resist “political forces deliberately fomenting hatred toward the Russian people”.