A time of gathering and sharing for many Ukrainians. This Sunday, June 12, our special envoys attended a mass for soldiers based in the Donbass. In a small church in Kramatorsk, the Orthodox Pentecost was celebrated by Father Vasyl Ivanyuk.
With our special correspondents in Kramatorsk, Clea Broadhurst and Julien Boileau
Since the start of the war, he has traveled the country to help the families of soldiers. In a small wooden church in Kramatorsk, Father Vasyl Ivanyuk, a priest attached to the army, celebrates the Pentecost mass.
At first, you wonder why. What’s the point ? I was in denial, because I was too busy to think about it. Then we realized that it was not only the country that was in danger, but the Ukrainian identity. Then I started doing masses all over the place, some of them on the hood of my car.
Bogdan, nicknamed “the savior”, is the doctor of the 47th battalion based in the Donbass. Impossible for him to miss this mass.
Among the soldiers, some are believers, others are not. But no matter what, they think something is protecting them. Sometimes the bullets don’t reach them, they miss them. As a doctor, I saw a lot of critical injuries, impossible to get out alive. And yet, some do. For me, this is only possible thanks to a higher force.
For Katarina, a lady who came to attend Father Vasyl’s mass, religion is more than necessary now.
Religion is a hundred times more important to me today than before. Much more than before. Before that, I could sometimes pray, but since the beginning of the war, I pray every day.
Above all, she prays that the Russians do not take Kramatorsk.
I read in Ukrainian, I sing in Ukrainian, I do everything in Ukrainian. I understand Russian, I learned it, but I was raised in Ukrainian. I am Ukrainian!
If the Russians were to take the city, it will be branded a traitor to the nation, it will have no choice but to flee.
►Read again: After the capture of Lyman, the inhabitants of Kramatorsk are preparing for the worst