“A miracle on the Dnipro”: His Beatitude Sviatoslav on the rescue of Kyiv at the Conference at the LUMSA University in Rome
On May 13, the LUMSA University of Rome hosted a conference entitled “Fatima: Russia and Ukraine in the Modern Historical Era.” The online speaker from Kyiv was His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Head and Father of the UGCC.
Speaking about the plan of Russian troops to capture Kyiv at the beginning of a full-scale war quickly and the courageous resistance of the Ukrainian army, His Beatitude Sviatoslav characterized it as a “miracle on the Dnipro,” drawing a parallel with the historical event of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, the so-called Battle of Warsaw. It was then that the Poles could stop the Bolshevik invasion of Europe, and the then nuncio to Poland, later Pope Pius XI, called this battle the “Miracle on the Vistula.”
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, the Head of the UGCC pointed to its distinct genocidal dimension due to Russia’s colonial ambitions. “During the full-scale war, we realized that it is not just a war of one country against another or even a military operation, but a real genocide of our people, accompanied by dreadful war crimes of mass graves, torture of civilians, deportation of children, etc.”
“The denial of the existence of the Ukrainian people as a nation with its history, language, culture, and church tradition is propaganda that Kremlin leaders have been proclaiming for a long time. For Russian ideologues, being a Ukrainian does not mean belonging to a nation with its own identity but instead being an adherent of a specific artificially created Western ideology. That is why the ideology of the Russian world denies the right of Ukrainians to have their independent state and treats Ukraine as its old colony. Therefore, the war in Ukraine is colonial indeed, and the Russian authorities use history to manipulate their propaganda machine.”
His Beatitude Sviatoslav also pointed to the “sacrilegious instrumentalization of Christian values” by the Russian Orthodox Church, which not only “did not condemn the war of aggression against Ukraine, but also praises the war crimes of Russian soldiers as a feat and heroic defense of the Orthodox faith against the satanic West.”
The Head of the UGCC called on the intellectual world “not to be silent” but to make an appropriate scientific assessment of the Russian world’s ideology.
However, the message of Fatima of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to His Beatitude Sviatoslav, ‘is a message of hope for us — hope for a shelter for Ukraine and repentance and conversion of Russia.” “Although to free ourselves from the trap of the ideology of the Russian world,” said the head of the UGCC, “we still have a long way to go, and not only in Russia…”
The conference was held on the day when the Catholic Church commemorates the Fatima apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On this day, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Francis. “For us Christians, many coincidences on this symbolic day are a sign of God’s providence,” commented His Beatitude Sviatoslav.
The Secretariat of the Head of the UGCC in Rome
