Kiev, April 5, 2022
Photo: news.church.ua
“I learned from the news today what happened in Bucha. It’s terrible. Sorrow filled my heart,” the Ukrainian primate says in a statement regarding reports of a massacre in Bucha, a city in the Kiev Province.
The Battle of Bucha lasted from February 27 to March 31, after which Russian forces withdrew. After Ukrainian forces regained control of the city, reports of atrocities and war crimes began to emerge. According to Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk, hundreds of bodies were found in the city and region, including those of Ukrainian civilians, and Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
The Ukrainian National Police have opened investigations into the events in Bucha, and the Foreign Ministry has requested an International Criminal Court Investigation in Ukraine, to collect evidence of Russian war crimes.
Meanwhile, Russia has requested a special meeting of the UN Security Council to address what it contends is a Ukrainian provocation of spreading “deliberately false information.” As for the U.S., the Pentagon is unable to independently verify Ukrainian accounts of Russian atrocities, but has no reason to dispute them, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday.
“I turn those who committed this over to the judgment of God, from Whom nothing can be concealed,” His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine said in his statement yesterday.
“I express my deep compassion to the relatives of the victims, and I pray for those who died violently and I entreat the Lord to receive their souls in the mansions of the righteous,” His Beatitude concluded.
Characteristically, Evstraty Zorya, the speaker for the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” took advantage of the opportunity to again criticize the Ukrainian primate, for not directly attacking Russia in his expression of condolences and prayers.
However, other hierarchs have responded with a different tone.
His Grace Bishop Sylvester of Belgorod, rector of the Kiev Theological Seminary and Academy, writes that all of Ukraine and the entire international community is shocked by scenes from Gostomel, Irpin, and especially Bucha.
“The number of dead and killed civilians goes to at least hundreds. But at the same time, corpses with traces of violent death continue to be found in liberated cities and mass graves are being identified. It’s necessary to call things by their proper names directly. CRIMES have been committed,” His Grace exclaims. Although to date, it remains to be proven whether these crimes were committed by Russian troops or members of such neo-Nazi Ukrainian battalions as Azov, retaliating against citizens who may have collaborated with Russian troops.
“How can we talk to people about God after all that we have seen in the current war by Russia against Ukraine?” His Grace wonders. “I’m sure the answer to this question will be sought by theologians and clergymen of various Christian denominations for more than a year. But the world will never be the same again…”
Follow OrthoChristian on Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!
