As Russia sent a barrage of rockets to Ukraine over the weekend, a bishop living in an eastern Ukraine diocese on the front lines of war said such events make hope “rather waning” for his people. Source: OSV News.
But papal gestures and some perspectives for peace under the new US administration, he added, “flare up hope” as the country prepares for the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022.
“They always hit most at night, counting on a lower capacity of Ukrainian soldiers’ vigilance,” Auxiliary Bishop Jan Sobilo of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia said on Monday.
Bishop Sobilo said that he was travelling from Zaporizhzhia to Kyiv late at night on October 31, as “the Shahed drones were flying and our soldiers were hunting them”, adding “it’s a real shootout to throw them down”.
The weekend assault began on January 30 in the middle of the night, as a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Sumy, killing at least six people – three older married couples – and wounding nine others, including a child, the region’s officials said.
On the same night, the historic city of Odesa was targeted as UNESCO-branded sites were hit by Russian missiles, injuring seven people and with debris falling close to the city’s famous 19th-century opera house.
The historic Bristol hotel was hit, shattering glass and damaging decorative elements in the splendid, ornamented interiors.
On Saturday, a Russian strike in Poltava killed at least seven people and injured 14 , including three children, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said, when another night-time missile hit the apartment building.
Bishop Sobilo said though hope is “rather waning”, one who lifts up Ukrainian Catholics is Pope Francis and his constant “gestures of closeness and help pouring from Vatican charities”.
FULL STORY
For Ukrainians ‘on brink of endurance,’ bishop says ‘gestures of solidarity’ bring back hope (By Paulina Guzik, OSV News)
