Shadow of war hangs over Orthodox Easter as Zelenskiy and Putin mark holiday
Russian president attends service led by one of his staunchest backers while Zelenskiy asserts God is on Kyiv’s side
Orthodox Easter services in Ukraine and Russia
have taken on a political tone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy asserted that God
had a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder” and Vladimir Putin attended a
church service led by a staunch supporter of Moscow’s invasion.
Noting that Ukraine had now been fighting Russia
for 802 days, Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to pray for each other and
the soldiers on the frontline. “And we believe: God has a chevron with
the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder,” said the president, dressed in a traditional embroidered Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt and khaki trousers. “So with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.”
Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter this weekend, while most western churches observed the holiday on 31 March
In Moscow, Putin attended an Easter service led by
the head of the country’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, a
supporter of the Russian president.
Video of
the service showed Putin, dressed in a dark suit and joined by Moscow’s
mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, crossing himself several times during the
service in Moscow’s gold-domed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
The
patriarch prayed for the protection of the “sacred borders” of Russia
and expressed hope that God would halt the “internecine strife” between
Russia and Ukraine, the Tass state news agency reported.
In
his Easter message, Putin did not explicitly mention the war or what
Russia refers to as a “special military operation”. Instead he thanked
Kirill for “fruitful cooperation in the current difficult period, when
it is so important for us to unite our efforts for the steady
development and strengthening of the fatherland”.
Under Kirill’s watch the church has cracked down on internal dissent, with one priest facing expulsion
for refusing to call on God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine and
another suspended for presiding over memorial services at the grave of
Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in an Arctic prison in February.
The sombre, politically tinged ceremonies took place as Russia launched a
barrage of drones, injuring at least six people including a child, and
officials said that a Russian rocket strike on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed two people.
In Pokrovsk, about 35 miles (56km) from Donetsk
city, the Russian-held capital of the region, which Moscow claims to
have annexed, “rocket attacks killed two people and damaged a house”,
Vadym Filashkin, Ukraine’s governor of the eastern Donetsk region, said
in a Telegram post.
Ukraine’s air force said
Russia had fired 24 Iranian-style Shahed drones at its territory
overnight, 23 of which were shot down. “A house and outbuildings were
burned down as a result of ‘Shahed’ attacks. Six people were injured,
among them a girl born in 2015,” the governor of Kharkiv, Oleg
Synegubov, said on Telegram.
Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion
of Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands have been killed and
millions more driven from their homes. In both Russia and Ukraine,
leaders have sought to use religion and the church to rally society
behind the war effort.
In a video message published on Sunday from Kyiv’s
Saint Sophia Cathedral, where an exhibition features religious icons
painted on ammunition boxes, Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, called on
Ukrainians to pray for the safe return of soldiers celebrating Easter in
the trenches. He also called on Ukrainians to pray for the land and
people, whose spirit “cannot be broken” and who he said would see
Ukraine free one day.
“Ukrainians kneel only in prayer,” said Zelenskiy. “And never before invaders and occupiers.”
