"Brother, I implore you to ask Vladimir Putin to stop the senseless fight against the Ukrainian people. Innocent people are dying, and not only soldiers are suffering, but also civilians - especially women and children."
According to the CMC, the Chairman of the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Stanislaw Gondetski, stated this in his letter to the leader of the ROC.
"I ask you wholeheartedly to call for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the sovereign state of Ukraine," he wrote.
The archbishop added that "no reason, no excuse can justify the decision to launch a military invasion of an independent country by bombing homes, schools or kindergartens."
The head of the Episcopate stressed that war is always a defeat for humanity. "This war, as I wrote in my previous letter, is all the more absurd because of the closeness of both peoples and their Christian roots. Is it possible to destroy the cradle of Christianity on Slavic soil, the place of the baptism of Russia?" he wrote.
Archbishop Gondetsky also asked Kirill to appeal to Russian soldiers "not to take part in this unjust war, to refuse to carry out orders that, as we have already seen, lead to numerous war crimes." Refusal to comply with the order in such a situation is a moral obligation," he stated in the letter. At the same time, he asked Kirill to call on all Russian Orthodox brothers to fast and pray to "establish a just peace in Ukraine."
The head of the Episcopate addressed Kirill for the second time. The previous letter sent on February 14 addressed the Orthodox and Catholic bishops of Russia and Ukraine. At that time, Archbishop Gondetsky called for "uniting the spiritual efforts of Christ's followers of different denominations in Russia, Ukraine and Poland to avert the shadow of another war in our region."