Christmas always comes, but will it finally bring peace to the brave people of Ukraine?
As 2024 draws to its close, it’s not only the UK that has begun to feel the cold breath of winter. In eastern Ukraine this week, as the world hangs in limbo awaiting the uncertain consequences of a Donald Trump presidency, both sides in this long, bitter conflict are striving to make what little strategic gains they can before far greater forces join the fray. We are now more than 1,000 days into this dreadful war that has seen widespread destruction, the displacement of millions of innocent civilians and countless lives lost.
In a post on social media last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky made a rare admission of the casualty figures – 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, and 370,000 injured. The president also claimed that 198,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and a further 550,000 wounded. Whilst it’s always hard to verify any casualty claims in the midst of a live war many have taken Zelensky at his word, and his numbers are very similar to estimates that have been provided by Western observers. Just last month the UK defence ministry stated that Russia has suffered 45,680 casualties in November alone, the highest monthly figure since the invasion began back in February 2022. Elsewhere according to UK Defence Intelligence sources, Russia is losing an average of 1,523 soldiers a day, either killed or seriously wounded. Of course the Russians dispute these figures, but the relentless stream of highly graphic and disturbing videos being thrown out on social media every day by Ukrainian forces of attacks of Russian troops make it very self-evident that this is becoming yet another deeply entrenched and unwinnable war that seems doomed to escalate even further.
Events were already threatening to tip over into a far broader and deadlier conflict just this morning, as it was announced that NATO fighter jets had been scrambled in a bid to protect Poland’s eastern flank as Vladmir Putin’s forces unleashed a renewed wave of terror on Ukraine. For his part, NATO Secretary general Mark Rutte has warned it is time to “shift to a wartime mindset”, describing the current security situation as the worst in his lifetime.
“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years,” he said in his first major speech since becoming secretary general in October, urging members to “turbocharge” their defence spending.
According to President Zelensky, this morning Russia fired 93 cruise and ballistic missiles and some 200 drones in an attempt to deliver one of the heaviest bombardments since the war began. It is said that 81 of the 93 missiles were shot down before they hit their targets, but those that did caused substantial damage and a number of deaths. This latest strike comes hard on the heals of Tuesday’s missile attack on the Ukrainian southern city of Zaporizhzhia, where at least eight people were killed when a Russian ballistic missile hit a private clinic and residential buildings.
As we all know, winters hit particularly hard in eastern Europe and this latest escalation will do little to slow the already appalling death toll, especially amongst civilians and the displaced who will be especially vulnerable as the temperatures plummet, and essential supplies and shelter continue to be eroded. With the 1,000 day mark passing, and the good will and peace of Christmas approaching, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) – the association of Catholic Church episcopal conferences in member states of the European Union – has sent a formal letter of support for Ukraine to the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations. Signed by the President of COMECE, H. E. Mgr. Mariano Crociata, the letter calls upon political leaders in Europe to renew their efforts at finding a lasting peace to the conflict.
“In these difficult and uncertain times, especially as winter sets in and the geopolitical landscape remains fraught with instability, we wish to assure you that EU Bishops remain united in prayer for the people of Ukraine and for a just and lasting peace,” writes Mgr. Mariano Crociata.
“Amidst the cold and fear that many of our brothers and sisters are currently experiencing, we pray that no one may feel abandoned. May all those who suffer from the consequences of the war, find warmth, shelter and welcome. We equally pray for those bearing political responsibility in Europe and in the world, that their decisions may be guided by the virtues of wisdom, integrity and discernment in the service of justice and peace.”
Despite the ever-deepening shadows of a global war there are those who actually believe that peace may not only be possible, but may be just around the corner. After all, we have a Russian leader militarily way out of his depth and driving his empire to ruin, a Ukrainian president struggling increasingly to secure support for his country’s resistance, and above all that the prospect of the arrival of a US president in a few week’s time who not only has his own unorthodox approach to solving global problems, but a profound weakness for being hailed as the hero of the moment. For some commentators a post-Christmas settlement has most likely already been agreed – one that lets Putin off the hook and restores his economy, coupled with allowing a flamboyant incoming president to claim he has brokered an historic peace, after which the world may carry on as it always has – doing trade, selling arms and above preserving the status quo of free market capitalism.
But what would be the price of such a peace for the people of Ukraine? Most likely Putin will keep Crimea and the Donbass and claim that he has negotiated back Kursk Oblast, a small area of which the Ukrainians swept into with unusual ease back in August. As with most wars the surviving soldiers will go home to their families, the civilians will be left to bury their dead and pick up the pieces, and everyone will likely wonder what on earth it was all about.
As depressing as that sounds, most authorities are actually seeing this as the best hope for a lasting peace in the region, though it’s highly unlikely in this scenario that many Ukrainians would rejoice and give thanks. Their suffering goes back centuries, with Russia as the main protagonist – and it should also be mentioned for the record that the systematic persecution of Catholics has been inextricably linked to the territorial disputes that have given rise to the present crisis.
Russia expanded its western borders aggressively throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, annexing huge swathes of Eastern Poland and smashing the Catholic faith as it went. The Russian czars wanted to bring all Eastern-rite Catholics into the Orthodox Church; Catherine II suppressed the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine in 1784 and Nicholas I did the same in Belarus and Lithuania in 1839. Alexander II did too, in the Eparchy of Chelm in 1874, and officially suppressed the Eparchy in 1875. The Uniate Church (later the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church), in steadfast communion with the Holy See, was a particular target and was suppressed ruthlessly, before being abolished entirely by the act of the Synod of Polotsk in 1839.
The history of the Catholics of this region is littered with atrocities and martyrdom – the forced conversion of the Eparchy of Chelm, the Pratulin Martyrs, the four Redemptorist martyrs of Ukraine, the victims of Stalinist persecution and the murder of all the Catholic bishops of Ukraine in 1945. The deeper you dig, the longer and more heart-wrenching the list gets. Stalin in particular saw the Catholic Church as the prime defender of a Ukrainian territory that he wanted desperately to secure. His collectivisation of the people’s farms and confiscation of their grain from 1932-1933 led to the forced starvation (known as the Holdomor) and it is said the death of some ten million Ukrainians. In 1939 he sent the Red Army in to smash the Church and liquidate it by terror if needed. Convents, schools, hospitals and many Catholic churches were burnt to the ground, half the Catholic clergy was imprisoned and others, as well as lay Catholics, were severely flogged, terribly tortured and even murdered.
Such was the extent of atrocities committed against the Catholics of the region that Pope Pius XII felt obliged to issue an encyclical – Orientales Omnes Ecclesias – declaring the support of Rome for the faithful of the Ukraine.
“We address all of you, Catholics of the Ruthenian [Ukrainian/Belarusian] Church. We share your sorrows and afflictions with a father’s heart. We know that grievous snares are being set for your faith. There seems ground for fear that in the near future still greater hardships will befall those who refuse to betray their sacred religious allegiance. For that reason, we even now exhort you in the Lord, beloved sons, to be terrified by no menaces or injuries, to be moved by no danger of exile or risk even of life ever to abjure your faith and your fidelity to Mother Church,” said Pius.
Decades later, when Pope St. John Paul II paid a formal visit to the Ukraine, he beatified 28 Greek Catholic martyrs, 27 of whom had died during persecution of the church in Soviet times and one nun who died in 1918 when western Ukraine was part of Poland. When he first arrived in Ukraine, John Paul said that he was “just a pilgrim” and stressed that this visit had no political overtones, but when he congratulated the Ukrainians “from Simferopol and Odessa to Kharkiv, from Donetsk to Lviv” he was clearly and very publicly supporting the inviolability of the current borders of the Ukrainian state, and its desire to build its future as a European independent state.
As we know only too well, the current Russian President cares little for such murky and shameful areas of his nation’s history, instead preferring to draw his battle lines on the primacy of past Russian ownership of the Ukraine – but that ceased 23 years ago when Ukraine finally gained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Putin’s Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 he very knowingly triggered a whole catalogue of internecine differences that he thought would tear Ukraine apart and bring about its swift demise. His profound misjudgement on this has reduced his place in history from dynamic autocrat and ebullient dictator, to ruthless despot and genocidal maniac.
For his part the controversial incoming 47th president of the United States has consistently promised to end the war “in a day” but has been less than explicit about exactly how he plans to achieve that remarkable feat of global diplomacy. No doubt a lot of money, painful land deals and lucrative inter-governmental contracts will play their part in any post-Christmas negotiations.
As it happens, for the first time since 1917 Ukraine is celebrating Christmas this year like the rest of us on 25th December, instead of the traditional date of 7th January – the date for Christmas in the Julian calendar, which Russia uses. The decision to adopt the Western, Gregorian calendar is being signalled by Ukraine as symbolic of its determination to rid itself of historic Russian influences, and realign itself with its more ancient Christian inheritances.
As we make our tenuous way together through the next few weeks and months, let’s hope and pray profoundly that the Christmas spirit of peace and goodwill, and the light of hope that ever shines from the Bethlehem stable, will also shape and influence the thoughts and actions of those who hold so many lives, and perhaps even the peace of the world, in their hands.
Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian
Pic: Symbols of peace and the hope of freedom – the facade of the Saint-Sophia cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, under the snow, with a sculpture of two hands attached in the foreground.