By Kate Scanlon, OSV News
WASHINGTON — Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk called on the international community to stop Russia’s aggression against Ukraine after the worst attack on that nation’s capital in nine months and as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept his terms for peace negotiations.
On April 23, Trump argued Zelenskyy was being “harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia” after the Ukrainian leader had ruled out accepting Russia’s occupation of Crimea and other territory in Ukraine. Those terms were reportedly part of a peace deal Trump has sought that would have frozen current front lines and allowed Russia to control the territory it seized by warfare.
“He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Later that night, Russia launched a missile and drone attack on Kyiv, killing at least 12 people and wounding over 70 in the biggest attack on Ukraine’s capital this year. Russia’s aerial assault began at 1 a.m. April 24 and lasted 11 hours.
“On Bright Thursday, Ukraine endured another terrifying night marked by a massive missile and drone attack by Russia,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the patriarchal head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a statement mourning the violence and those killed in the attacks. Bright Thursday refers to the Thursday after Easter on the liturgical calendar of both Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches.
“The consequences of this barbaric assault are especially harrowing for the residents of Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district, where search and rescue operations continue amid the ruins of a destroyed residential building — where phones still ring beneath the rubble, where two children are still missing,” he said.
Major Archbishop Shevchuk urged “religious leaders, heads of state, and public figures of the international community to issue a unified appeal, a unified call, and to take joint action to end Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
The Bright Thursday attack on Kyiv followed a deadly Palm Sunday ballistic missile attack by Russia on Sumy, Ukraine, that killed 34 — including two children — and injured 119.
Russia’s barrage on Kyiv prompted rare criticism from Trump, arguing on his social media website the attacks were “very bad timing” and telling Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Vladimir, STOP!”
But on April 24, Trump suggested in comments in the Oval Office that Russia made a “pretty big concession” in not taking over the entirety of Ukraine.
Trump, who as a candidate repeatedly said that he would be able to end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours” upon taking office is approaching his 100th day in office without having secured a resolution.
Earlier the same week, Vice President JD Vance suggested the U.S. would “walk away from this process,” if the Trump administration’s proposal was not agreed to.
Antonio Fidel Perez, a professor at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law who studies foreign relations law, told OSV News, “Plainly, the president has the constitutional power to recognize foreign states — including their boundaries as part of that power — as the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear.”
“But the United States has previously and consistently refused to recognize territorial claims based on aggression, such as Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine both in 2014, when it acquired control of Crimea, and beginning again in 2022,” he said.
Perez noted that under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine “gave up nuclear weapons in return for legally non-binding security guarantees of its territorial integrity.”
“In that political agreement, the U.S. made a commitment to which, many would argue, U.S. Catholics should not be morally indifferent,” he said.
Earlier this month, the United Nations reported that during March civilian casualties in Ukraine had risen 50% since February, and 71% compared to the same time last year.
