Ukraine marks Orthodox Easter with prayers for those trapped

On Sunday, Ukrainians celebrated Orthodox Easter in the capital, Kyiv, with prayers for troops fighting on the front lines and those imprisoned beyond them in regions such as Mariupol.

Hundreds of devotees clutching baskets to be blessed surrounded Kyiv’s St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral. Inside, a woman grasped a soldier’s arm, turning momentarily to kiss his elbow. Other troops prayed and crossed themselves while carrying a handful of candles. An older woman walked carefully through the crowd and stands of flickering candles. One young lady was holding daffodils. A soldier who only revealed his first name, Mykhailo, used his helmet as an Easter basket outside the church. He stated that he did not have another.

“I’m hoping I’ll only need the helmet for this,” he remarked.
At another ceremony in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored Ukrainians not to let their emotions over the conflict consume them.
“We’re all hoping for a dawn soon,” he remarked.

With the Orthodox church divided by Russia-Ukraine hostilities, some believers hoped the holy day would inspire acts of peacemaking. “The church can assist,” claimed one guy who only supplied his first name, Serhii, as he approached a church under the Moscow Patriarchate in Kyiv. He and others brought Easter baskets to be blessed by priests, with flicks of a brush spraying holy water over donations of home-dyed eggs, lit candles, and even bottles of Jack Daniels.

Residents of war-ravaged rural areas embraced the occasion with a sense of resistance. “We’ll celebrate Easter no matter what, no matter how much tragedy,” Kateryna Lazarenko, 68, said in the northern town of Ivanivka, near Chernihiv, where destroyed Russian tanks still littered the roadways. “How do I feel? Everyone is worried, even me “Olena Koptyl, another resident, remarked this as she baked her Easter bread. “The Easter holiday brings no joy. I’m sobbing a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.” She and 12 others spent a month hiding from Russian forces in the basement of her home until the army retreated.

After Zelenskyy said he would meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday, Ukraine prepared for the first high-level US visit to Kyiv before the war began on Feb. 24. In a press conference Saturday night, Zelenskyy provided few details but stated that he expected results “not just present or some type of pastries, but particular items and precise weaponry.”