A United States Ukrainian Catholic archbishop is speaking out after Russian forces struck a kindergarten in Ukraine’s second largest city, killing two children – including an infant – near that nation’s capital. Source: OSV News.
“The moral clarity and the difference between the aggressor and the victim cannot be more clear,” Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia said in a statement.
At least one person was killed and six wounded when Russian drones targeted a private kindergarten in Kharkiv, with children present in the building.
Amid the strike, which took place on Tuesday at about 9am local time, teachers successfully led all 48 children within the school to bomb shelters, according to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that many children were “experiencing acute stress reactions” following the strike.
“There is no justification for a drone strike on a kindergarten, nor can there ever be,” said Mr Zelenskyy, who called the strikes “Russia’s slap in the face to everyone who insists on a peaceful solution”.
Archbishop Gudziak described the attack as “yet another sign of the relentless barbarity of the Russian invaders”.
The Kharkiv kindergarten attack followed an intense overnight bombardment by Russia designed to cripple Ukraine’s energy grid as winter approaches.
Two people were killed and 29 injured in Kyiv, with four more – including a six-month-old baby and a 12-year-old child – slain in the capital’s surrounding region.
“It should become clear to all that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin does not want peace. In their quest for conquest the invaders stop at nothing,” Archbishop Gudziak said.
He also called on Russian Christians throughout the world to denounce Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, which were initiated in 2014 before the full-scale invasion in 2022.
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Gudziak: Russian drone attack on Ukrainian kindergarten shows ‘relentless barbarity’ (By Gina Christian, OSV News)
