The Head of the UGCC calls on the academia of the Catholic Church to give a legal assessment of the modern neo-imperial geopolitics of Russia
His Beatitude Sviatoslav spoke about his personal experience of what he saw in the Ukrainian territories previously occupied by Russian soldiers. "Today, it is obvious to all of us that the evil that has come to our land has a clear ideological component and a specific name — the Russian World."
The Head of the UGCC cited statistics from international organizations on the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, 422 children have been killed, and 805 children have been injured. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, 6,221 civilians were killed, and 9,371 civilians were injured. According to UNICEF in Ukraine, out of 3.2 million children who have been displaced by the war, about 1.6 million children are at risk of living on the brink of hunger and face the risk of food insecurity. Attacks on water infrastructure and power outages have left about 1.4 million people in Ukraine without access to water. Another 4.6 million only have limited access.
"These data, but first of all the personal experience of the war that we are experiencing, show that we are not talking about an ordinary war of one country against another, much less a military operation, but about the real genocide of the Ukrainian people and the terrible crimes against humanity committed by Russian soldiers."
His Beatitude Sviatoslav drew the audience's attention to the manual on the genocide of Ukrainians, which the Russian authorities published on the page of the RIA Novosti Press Agency at the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine.
"This is a blatant program of the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such, which the famous historian Timothy Snyder described as one of the most open genocidal documents. This document clearly calls for the elimination of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people."
His Beatitude Sviatoslav stressed that"Russian soldiers adhere to every letter of this manual for the destruction of Ukrainians."
"But it is a real shock for us to see the Christian justification of this murderous ideology, to witness complete syntonia between the Kremlin authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church. From Patriarch Kirill to the priests who methodically justify these crimes, we see how the Christian faith becomes an ideological tool for promoting Russian Nazism. The justification and call for war on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church are increasingly reminiscent of the doctrine of the Islamic State ISIS. Moreover, the leaders of this church quote it verbatim, although they put it in Christian vestments. Recently, we even see their clergy in liturgical vestments with a grenade launcher in their hands shooting on the battlefield."
The head of the UGCC stressed the importance of serious scientific research on the ideology of the Russian World: "If the modern world does not condemn and stop the genocide of the Ukrainian people, tomorrow we will have even more victims, as happened in the past with Nazism and communism."
His Beatitude Sviatoslav appealed to the scientific world of the Catholic Church to carry out new research on the topics of war, violence, and the search for peace and justice in the context of modern challenges to the ideology of the Russian World, which destroys the foundations not only of international law and peaceful coexistence between peoples but also of trust in the Christian faith in a secularized world.
