The Council of the Metropolia, meeting in its annual session on 24-25 February 2022, was profoundly saddened and affected by the unjustifiable and unlawful invasion of our beloved Ukraine \u2013 a sovereign and independent nation recognized as such by the entire world \u2013 by the armed forces of the Russian Federation at the direction of its President, Vladimir Putin.\u00a0 As justification for his (and his alone) decision to invade Ukraine, Mr. Putin presented a completely false version of history linking Kyivan-Rus (Ukraine) and Rosiya (English \u2013 Russia).\u00a0 He further accused the Ukrainian nation of anti-Semitism with plans to develop nuclear weapons, among other falsehoods.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn Mr. Putin for the complete lack of truth in every part of his justification and for the truth about his invasion \u2013 his desire to rebuild his beloved, but thoroughly failed Soviet Union.\u00a0 We condemn the silence of Russian government and spiritual leaders who know this truth but by their silence condemn perhaps thousands or millions of innocent Ukrainian people to death or serious injury.\u00a0 This is nothing new for the governments of the Russian Federation and\/or the Soviet Union.\u00a0 The history of Ukraine is replete with genocide and crimes against humanity committed by them against the population of Ukraine,\u201d reads the statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe strongly urge all members of our Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, South America and the Diaspora to speak out boldly in support of the once again suffering Ukrainian nation \u2013 her government, armed forces and her people.\u00a0 We urge all freedom loving people to exhibit their support for the people of Ukraine not only in prayers and thoughts, but to take to the streets demanding that their elected government officials seek every possible way of supporting them with whatever they need to survive.\u00a0 We urge all members of our church and beyond to contribute to the fund-raising efforts on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church official website: uocofusa.org and on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA Facebook page.\u00a0 Every penny of donations received through these efforts will go to the aid of wounded armed forces members and their families, to those suffering the consequences of the invasion with destroyed churches, homes and injuries and to those forced to become refugees in neighboring countries.\u00a0 We have the means and methods of providing this aid and we pray that it is plentiful,\u201d the statement says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe members of the Council of the Metropolia join citizens of the world in hundreds of cities, towns and villages throughout the world who have already gathered to manifest their prayers and support to the Ukrainian people.\u00a0 May our loving God in the Holy Trinity \u2013 Father, Son and Holy Spirit \u2013 receive our prayerful petitions sending the legions of angels commanded by Archangel Michael, the patron saint of Kyiv, to crush the ambitions of the aggressors,\u201d the Council stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Council of the Metropolia, meeting in its annual session on 24-25 February 2022, was profoundly saddened and affected by the unjustifiable and unlawful invasion of our beloved Ukraine \u2013 a sovereign and independent nation recognized as such by the entire world \u2013 by the armed forces of the Russian Federation at the direction of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"telegram_tosend":false,"telegram_tosend_message":"","telegram_tosend_target":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5142],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-85952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/UA-MC-Statement-WB.jpg?fit=1600%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}