Ukraine, April 20, 2022
Photo: kommersant.ru
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called for a four-day ceasefire in the fighting in Ukraine yesterday, to allow for evacuation and humanitarian corridors in the days surrounding the celebration of Holy Pascha.
Guterres said in his address:
In five days, Ukrainians and Russians will mark Easter. This holiday unites the Orthodox Christians in both Russia and Ukraine… Easter is a season for renewal, resurrection, and hope. It’s a time for reflection on the meaning of suffering, sacrifice, death, and rebirth. It is meant to be a moment of unity. But this year, Holy Week is being observed under the cloud of a war that represents the total negation of the Easter message… Today, I’m calling for a 4-day Holy Week humanitarian pause beginning on Holy Thursday and running through April Sunday, April 24, to allow for the opening of a series of humanitarian corridors.
At the same time, Fr. Ioan Sauca, a Romanian Orthodox priest, wrote to Patriarch Kirill in his role as Acting General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, calling on him to,
intervene and ask publicly for a ceasefire for at least few hours during the Resurrection service. To give a chance to the soldiers and to the terrified civilians to embrace and greet one another with the paschal greeting, to silence for a moment the bombs and the missiles and to hear instead the triumphant sound of the church bells and the joyful signing of the faithful people. May such a short ceasefire be a foretaste and a proof that a lasting peace can be achieved.
While it is not within the Patriarch’s power to stop the war or influence those who make such decisions, Fr. Ioan notes, “the faithful are waiting for a comforting word from Your Holiness. They think that if you come out with a public statement and request, as the spiritual father of so many millions of Orthodox in both Russia and Ukraine, that might have an impact.”
Fr. Ioan also wrote to the Patriarch in early March, calling for him to intercede for an end to the war.
However after Guterres’ address, Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council that he viewed such calls as “insincere, and in practice they merely point to an aspiration to provide Kiev nationalists breathing room to regroup and receive more drones, more antitank missiles and more MANPADS [man-portable air-defense systems—OC],” reports the New York Times.
“We will carefully separate such tactical pseudo-peacemaking appeals from a sincere desire to help Ukraine make the only correct and long overdue decision… The sooner Ukraine does this, despite the encouraging spells of those who want to cash in more on its tragedy that began in 2014, including the EU leadership that finally dropped the masks, the better it will be for this country,” the Deputy Ambassador emphasized, reports RIA-Novosti.
Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, voiced the same concerns, saying more than 20 truces reached over the 8 years of the Minsk process were violated by Ukraine.
However, as Polyansky emphasized, the decision on a ceasefire doesn’t depend on him: “Such things are decided in Moscow by the Ministry of Defense.”
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