Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday vowed more retribution against Russia and signed a law banning the Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the country celebrated its third independence day since the Russian invasion.
Zelenskiy addressed Ukrainians in a video filmed in the forested border area from where Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Russia on Aug. 6.
Kyiv is celebrating independence from the Soviet Union as the long war with Russia reaches a dramatic moment, as it mounts the Kursk incursion and Moscow eyes more east Ukrainian towns.
Photo: AFP / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
“Russia was seeking one thing: to destroy us. Instead, today we celebrate the 33rd Independence Day of Ukraine, and what the enemy brought to our land has now returned to its home,” Zelenskiy said, standing amid a hilly area a “few kilometers” from where Kyiv’s forces entered Russia.
He called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “sick man from Red Square who constantly threatens everyone with the red button.”
Ukraine’s Kursk invasion has rattled Moscow, but not slowed Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv has been evacuating some residents from the logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, amid fears that it will fall to Russian forces.
Zelenskiy also signed into law a bill that bans the Moscow-affiliated branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the war-torn country.
He said the move would strengthen his country’s independence and in an address yesterday declared that the “Ukrainian Orthodox [church] today is taking a step towards liberation from Moscow’s devils.”
Ukraine has been seeking to distance itself from the Russian church since 2014 and the efforts have accelerated since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The church officially broke away from the Moscow patriarchy in 2022, but Ukrainian officials repeatedly accuse its clerics of staying loyal to Russia. Russia’s invasion has been backed by the country’s Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch ally of President Vladimir Putin. Russia has slammed the move as “illegal.”
The Russian Orthodox Church, which used to preside over a large part of Ukrainian parishes, is furious over a historic schism in 2019 that saw the creation of a Kyiv-based branch of the church.
This week it called the ban comparable to “persecutions in the Roman Empire in the times of Nero and Diocletian, the so-called de-Christianization of France and atheist repressions in the Soviet Union.”
The Moscow church called the law a “political declaration” that would affect “hundreds of monasteries.”
Under the law, a time limit is set for religious groups to break their ties with Russia.
Russia yesterday said its air defenses had destroyed seven Ukrainian drones over its southern Voronezh region and Belgorod and Bryansk border regions.
Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev said a state of emergency was declared in the Ostrogozhsky District after the drone strikes, with 200 people evacuated from a small village, but did not elaborate on what exactly was hit.
He said one woman was hospitalized and in a “serious condition.”
Ukraine has hit Russian regions with drone attacks for months.
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