Orthodox Easter services in Ukraine and Russia have taken on a political tone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy asserted that God had a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder” and Vladimir Putin attended a church service led by a staunch supporter of Moscow’s invasion.
Noting that Ukraine had now been fighting Russia for 802 days, Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to pray for each other and the soldiers on the frontline. “And we believe: God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder,” said the president, dressed in a traditional embroidered Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt and khaki trousers. “So with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.”
Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter this weekend, while most western churches observed the holiday on 31 March.
In Moscow, Putin attended an Easter service led by the head of the country’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, a supporter of the Russian president.
Video of the service showed Putin, dressed in a dark suit and joined by Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, crossing himself several times during the service in Moscow’s gold-domed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
The patriarch prayed for the protection of the “sacred borders” of Russia and expressed hope that God would halt the “internecine strife” between Russia and Ukraine, the Tass state news agency reported.
In his Easter message, Putin did not explicitly mention the war or what Russia refers to as a “special military operation”. Instead he thanked Kirill for “fruitful cooperation in the current difficult period, when it is so important for us to unite our efforts for the steady development and strengthening of the fatherland”.
Under Kirill’s watch the church has cracked down on internal dissent, with one priest facing expulsion for refusing to call on God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine and another suspended for presiding over memorial services at the grave of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in an Arctic prison in February.
The sombre, politically tinged ceremonies took place as Russia launched a barrage of drones, injuring at least six people including a child, and officials said that a Russian rocket strike on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed two people.
In Pokrovsk, about 35 miles (56km) from Donetsk city, the Russian-held capital of the region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, “rocket attacks killed two people and damaged a house”, Vadym Filashkin, Ukraine’s governor of the eastern Donetsk region, said in a Telegram post.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired 24 Iranian-style Shahed drones at its territory overnight, 23 of which were shot down. “A house and outbuildings were burned down as a result of ‘Shahed’ attacks. Six people were injured, among them a girl born in 2015,” the governor of Kharkiv, Oleg Synegubov, said on Telegram.
Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands have been killed and millions more driven from their homes. In both Russia and Ukraine, leaders have sought to use religion and the church to rally society behind the war effort.
In a video message published on Sunday from Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, where an exhibition features religious icons painted on ammunition boxes, Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, called on Ukrainians to pray for the safe return of soldiers celebrating Easter in the trenches. He also called on Ukrainians to pray for the land and people, whose spirit “cannot be broken” and who he said would see Ukraine free one day.
“Ukrainians kneel only in prayer,” said Zelenskiy. “And never before invaders and occupiers.”
With contributions from Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse