Military chaplains with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine attended the pledge of allegiance ceremony held for the freshmen cadets at the Kherson State Maritime Academy.
During the solemn event on October 14, 2021, the head of the Synodal Department of the OCU Military Clergy, Metropolitan Ioan (Yaremenko), blessed the future naval specialists.
That’s according to the Academy press service.
Serhiy Kozyr, Head of the Kherson Regional State Administration, Andriy Shibayev, First Deputy Head of the local administration, Pavlo Pavlish, MP of Parliament’s 9th convocation, Yuriy Sobolevsky, First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, and Halyna Luhova, Secretary of the Kherson City Council, came to congratulate the youngsters on the important event, as well as Vitaliy Kindrativ, Head of the State Maritime and River Transport Service of Ukraine, Bohdan Zelensky, Founder of the Alfa Navigation Crewing Company, and delegates from local higher education facilities.
Accompanied by a brass band, future seamen marched the city streets before lining up along the Dnieper banks to receive from their predecessors the baton of maritime generations relay.
Traditionally, the cadets honored the memory of famous seamen who perished in the abyss and on the battlefields for the independence of Ukraine by laying wreaths in the waters of the Dnieper, at the memorial complex on the Alley of Heroes of Independent Ukraine, and at the Taras Shevchenko monument.
The Academy which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary has enrolled 837 cadets for full-time studies.
“We want their training to be successful and interesting, and their career path to be happy,” the statement said.
