Ukrainian Archbishop: My Country Would Welcome a ‘Serious Peace Proposal’

ROME — Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk told Italian media Thursday that his country would welcome a serious peace proposal from Russia with “great joy.”

In an interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, Archbishop Shevchuk recalled an “asymmetrical” appeal by Pope Francis in early October to the leaders of the two countries, in which the pontiff asked Russian president Vladimir Putin to “stop the aggression” while urging Ukrainian president Zelensky to accept “serious peace proposals.”

“If a serious peace proposal arrives, the country will accept it with great joy,” the archbishop declared, while also noting that the pope’s expression is often misunderstood.

The Russian side “is a prisoner of its own logic of war,” Shevchuk said, and Russia has “changed the notion of ‘peace proposal.’”

“For the Kremlin, peace is the appeasement of a colony it has conquered,” he contended. “And it is a peace that must be imposed. In fact, it is a surrender.”

“This model is unacceptable,” he stated, and “it is not ‘serious’ according to the conception of the pope.”

On the contrary, “all of Ukraine wants peace,” he said, pointing to the example of President Zelensky, who “made peace with Russia a key point in his electoral program.”

“As a Church we educate to build peace,” he said. “But above all we need to recognize Ukraine’s right to exist, something also denied recently by Putin.”

The archbishop revealed that he had just received a letter from Pope Francis expressing his “affectionate closeness” to the people of Ukraine while also putting the Vatican’s diplomatic corps at the service of a peaceful solution to the conflict.

“Since the beginning of the war in Donbass and Crimea, the Holy See has always declared its willingness to mediate,” Shevchuk said.

“Nevertheless, some premises are required,” he said. “First, both parties must agree on the urgency of mediation; second, the arguments for both must be heard; third, the parties must pledge to respect what arises from the mediation.”

As usual, the archbishop also criticized ongoing aggression, asserting that “Putin’s latest strategy is to bomb power stations in Ukraine to bring the nation to its knees with winter just around the corner.”

He went on to reference this week’s “shower of missiles over the whole country” which left half of Kyiv “without electricity.”

“It is a war crime, an immoral behavior intended to cause a new humanitarian crisis,” he declared.

Asked whether he is afraid of an escalation in the conflict, Shevchuk answered that “the whole war was an escalation.”

“And now, after the latest Russian defeats on the battlefield, we are being threatened with nuclear weapons,” he added.

Many are now saying, “They bombed our houses, they hit us with rockets and kamikaze drones, so what difference does it make to die from a missile or from an atomic bomb?” he observed.

The archbishop had especially tough words for the Russian Orthodox Church and its collusion with Putin’s government, noting that “Russian Patriarch Kirill blessed the invasion” and comparing his rhetoric to that of the Islamic State.

“No one justifies the attack except the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia,” he said, and even the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia has a “different position.”

“The way the Orthodox Church in Russia supports the war brings to mind the doctrine of Daesh,” he said. “The Islamic State used religion to legitimize the cruelest violence: we see the same in the direct preaching of the patriarch of Moscow and the priests in top positions.”

“ISIS considered the West to be immoral and therefore it had to be fought: this is what the Russian Church also says,” he added. “Daesh invited people to sacrifice themselves for the cause, assuring eternal life: the same emerges from Kirill’s words.”

“The Islamic world has created antibodies to protect itself from the ideological provocations of ISIS; now we Christians too are required to isolate this clear exploitation of the Gospel,” he said, to avoid “a fracture in the Christian world” as well as a loss of “the credibility of our faith.”

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