Declining an invitation to attend a meeting of Mediterranean mayors in Florence, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a letter that “in this dramatic time, I feel obliged to be with my people in prayer for peace.”
The prelate wrote, “These days, the Russian government has officially violated the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country, acknowledging the autonomy of the self-proclaimed republics of the DNR and LNR [the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics], sending the Russian army to ‘ensure peace.’”
Ukraine “protects European values at the cost of blood of its children, and my country risks becoming a field of death,” he continued. “The war in Ukraine can no longer be called a ‘Ukrainian crisis or conflict’ because it is a real attack on Europe, [on the] collective security and the future of the European continent.”
