A family sit in the Kyiv subway, using it as a bomb shelter in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. In Ukraine’s capital, many residents hurried underground for safety overnight Thursday and Friday as Russian forces fired on the city and moved closer. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The humanitarian and development agency International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) is responding to needs created by the conflict in Ukraine. Given the enormity of the crisis, IOCC has launched a campaign to raise at least $1 million dollars in private donations to support this work.

In response to the crisis in Ukraine, IOCC is working with partners in country and across the region to help address immediate needs, while looking ahead and planning for longer-term response.

Initial efforts in Ukraine include providing generators and fuel, as well as flashlights, batteries, and candles. Families with young children will also receive baby diapers. Read More

Metropolitan Hilarion (C), First Hierarch, with the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

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Your Beatitude, Your Eminences, Your Graces, Reverend Clergy, Monastics, and Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

It is morally and spiritually reprehensible for one Orthodox country to invade another—and yet we have precisely this situation with Russia invading Ukraine. Our Hierarchs must speak more strongly and firmly against this abominable act of aggression. Thus far the messages have been far too feeble.

ROCOR is the one branch of the Russian Orthodox Church whose very existence is born from opposition to what was wrong. Our forebears stood steadfast against oppression and dictatorship. Now, today, a dreadful time has again come to oppose clearly misguided violence and lawless aggression, exactly as those forebears did before. Forces in Russia twist and distort the nation’s spirit so as to threaten our fellow brethren made in God’s image in the land that is the Mother of all Orthodox Rus’. Swiftly growing ranks of Russians in Russia risk arrest to protest.

It therefore falls to us to speak loudly and firmly. ROCOR must not be silent, ambiguous, or engage in misdirection of the faithful with critique of the media coverage rather than bold condemnation. We must be clear, right now, else we surrender all spiritual ground that has ever been gained by our arduous struggle against tyranny and totalitarian government.

Let us follow the example set by our spiritual brother, Metropolitan Onufry, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, who clearly and firmly condemned the Russian aggression.

May Ukraine forgive us.

Signed:

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Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of All Georgia

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Onufry’s church in Ukraine has two options: either act by the old playbook or cut ties to Kirill.

Metropolitan Onufry of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (L), Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (R)

Just as we were witnessing the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) mobilising and expanding its influence on the African continent, the recognition by Russian President Putin of Donetsk and Luhansk as “independent states” amid the renewed war against Ukraine brings to the fore the possible ecclesiastical implications of such a decision for the Ukrainian and Russian Churches. The official position of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), according to Fr. Nikolai Danilevich, who is the Deputy Head of the Department for External Church Relations, is that it “considers these territories [Donetsk and Luhansk] and the people who live there to be part of Ukraine.” He says that the “dioceses in the Donbas remain part of the UOC and are managed from Kiev [sic]…”. According to him, the same applies to the situation in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. This supportive stance regarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity has been echoed by the Primate of the church Metropolitan Onufry and other high-level bishops from this church over the last couple of days. Read More