A War Without an Aggressor: How the Orthodox Church in America Talks About Ukrainian Refugees

On September 5, 2026, the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced a joint fundraising campaign with International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), aiming to raise $50,000 to support Ukrainian refugees in Poland. On October 7, the OCA published another announcement featuring Metropolitan Tikhon's appeal, reminding readers that donations were still welcome.

The OCA is an independent Orthodox Church rooted in the Russian Orthodox tradition. It received autocephaly from the Moscow Patriarchate in 1970. Its partner, IOCC, is a separate pan-Orthodox humanitarian organization that works with various Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States. In this campaign, the OCA is encouraging its faithful to contribute, while donations go directly to IOCC, which provides assistance to Ukrainian refugees in cooperation with ELEOS, a charitable organization affiliated with the Polish Orthodox Church.

The OCA has previously raised more than $720,000 for ELEOS. The new donations will help fund housing, legal assistance, language classes, vocational training, and other support programs. All of this is essential for people who have found themselves in a foreign country, trying to rebuild their lives.

It is, without question, a worthy cause. But as we read Metropolitan Tikhon's appeal, we were struck by the words he chose to describe the events that had made this assistance necessary.

The appeal opens by referring to the "outbreak of the devastating war in Ukraine" more than four years ago. It then speaks of "this tragedy," later of "this terrible war," and eventually simply of "this conflict," whose consequences people continue to suffer.

Taken individually, none of these expressions seems particularly troubling. The war is indeed terrible, what is happening is a tragedy, and its consequences are catastrophic. Yet reading the appeal as a whole leaves a rather strange impression.

The war broke out. It continues. It destroys people's lives. People leave their homes, flee to other countries, seek refuge, and struggle to settle somewhere new. But who started this war? Who forced these people to flee? The text offers no answer.

The phrase "displaced by war" is particularly revealing. War itself becomes the cause of people's suffering. Almost like a natural disaster: it appears, destroys ordinary life, and leaves people homeless.

The appeal provides considerable detail about the organizations helping Ukrainian refugees, the work they do, and the money they have raised. Charities are named, assistance programs are described. Yet Russia is not mentioned even once.

This war has victims, consequences, and people working to alleviate them. What it does not have, at least in this account, is anyone responsible for starting it.

Does a charitable appeal really need to name the aggressor?

There is, of course, an obvious objection. Metropolitan Tikhon was not making a political statement. He was asking people to donate money to refugees. It would hardly be fair to expect such an appeal to include a detailed discussion of the causes of the war, a condemnation of the Russian leadership, or a broader political assessment.

Humanitarian organizations, after all, tend to focus on human suffering and assistance to those affected. Expressions such as "humanitarian crisis," "displaced persons," and "people affected by the conflict" are perfectly ordinary in this kind of writing.

Fair enough. But acknowledging why Ukrainian refugees became refugees does not require a political manifesto.

The opening sentence, for example, could simply have read: "More than four years have passed since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine."

The appeal could then have continued exactly as it did, describing charitable programs and calling for compassion and Christian solidarity. There would have been no contradiction.

Still, perhaps we are reading too much into the wording. Perhaps avoiding any mention of the aggressor is simply standard practice in English-language Christian humanitarian communications, where the priority is to keep the focus on helping people.

To find out, we looked at how other Christian organizations write about Ukrainian refugees.

How other Christian organizations describe the war

We deliberately chose not to examine political statements by church leaders. Instead, we looked at ordinary humanitarian communications: fundraising appeals, reports on refugee assistance, and updates from Christian charities.

On its Ukraine assistance page in 2026, the American Catholic humanitarian organization Catholic Relief Services (CRS) writes:

"As Ukraine enters its fifth year following the Russian invasion in February 2022..."

What follows is a description of destroyed homes, families deprived of their livelihoods, heating shortages, psychological support, and assistance for children. There is no political argument. The organization simply identifies the event that caused the humanitarian crisis.

The Church of England uses similar language. In March 2022, it published practical guidance for parishes wishing to help Ukrainian refugees. The introduction explicitly refers to the "Russian invasion." In February 2023, when the Diocese of Portsmouth appealed to British families willing to host Ukrainian refugees, Russia's invasion was again mentioned directly.

The international Christian humanitarian alliance ACT Alliance, in its February 2024 appeal for funding to support its work in Ukraine, likewise referred explicitly to the Russian invasion.

Of course, a handful of publications cannot tell us everything about English-language Christian humanitarian writing. But they establish one important point: there is nothing about the genre of a charitable appeal that requires avoiding mention of Russia's invasion.

And how does IOCC describe the war?

Let us return to the organization working with the OCA to raise money for Ukrainian refugees.

We examined IOCC publications spanning the past four and a half years and found that its language closely resembles that of Metropolitan Tikhon's appeal. This pattern can be traced back to the very beginning of the full-scale invasion.

On February 28, 2022, just four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, IOCC issued a press release entitled "IOCC Responds to Ukraine Crisis." It explained that the organization was responding to humanitarian needs created by "the conflict in Ukraine."

On February 24, 2023, exactly one year after the full-scale invasion began, IOCC published an article entitled "Ukraine Response: One Year Later." It opened with the words: "As we pass one year since conflict began..."

Even on the anniversary of the Russian invasion, the organization chose to speak of the beginning of a "conflict."

Three more years passed, but the language remained much the same. On March 19, 2026, IOCC published the story of a Ukrainian family who had fled to Poland from the Kyiv and Bucha area. The circumstances of their flight were described as follows: "...when conflict reached the areas surrounding Kyiv and Bucha..."

The conflict "reached" the outskirts of Kyiv and Bucha, and the family had to flee. What actually happened, and whose troops entered those areas, is left unexplained.

In none of these three publications, spanning February 2022 to March 2026, is Russia mentioned even once. Given how consistently the same language appears, it is difficult to regard this as a coincidence.

A shared language: OCA and IOCC

There is another interesting detail. A shortened version of Metropolitan Tikhon's appeal also appears on IOCC's fundraising page. It retains the same references to the "devastating war," "tragedy," and "terrible war."

We do not know who actually drafted the appeal. It may have been prepared with IOCC's involvement and subsequently published under Metropolitan Tikhon's name. What we do know is that both organizations are using the text as part of their joint campaign.

What does this tell us?

We began with a charitable appeal that made no mention of Russia's invasion. We then discovered that the OCA's humanitarian partner has been using similar language for years. The nature of charitable fundraising alone cannot explain this: other Christian organizations have no difficulty referring to Russia's invasion while raising donations and describing their work with Ukrainian refugees.

It would, however, be unfair to suggest that the Orthodox Church in America has never identified Russia as the aggressor. It has, and in unmistakable terms.

In March 2022, the OCA's Holy Synod condemned the Russian Federation's war of aggression against Ukraine. In May of that year, Metropolitan Tikhon reaffirmed the Church's unconditional condemnation of Russian aggression, declaring that an unjust war of aggression is a sin. Similar language appeared in later statements. In June 2024, for example, an official report on Metropolitan Tikhon's visit to Ukraine explicitly referred to the Russian Federation's unjust aggression.

Such direct statements, however, are relatively few among the materials we examined, and the OCA does not consistently use equally explicit language when discussing assistance to Ukrainians.

It is telling that, at the All-American Council in July 2025, Archpriest John Hopko specifically asked Metropolitan Tikhon why his report had made no mention of Russia's war against Ukraine. The Metropolitan pointed to the Church's earlier condemnation of Russian aggression, its assistance to refugees, and his visit to Metropolitan Onufriy. Acknowledging the complexity of the situation, he said that prayer was the best way to work toward peace.

One further point is worth noting in passing. In the official OCA statements we examined, we found no public assessment of Patriarch Kirill's position or of the theological arguments used by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church to justify the war. Yet in March 2024, the World Russian People's Council, chaired by Patriarch Kirill, adopted a document describing the war against Ukraine as a "holy war," prompting criticism from the World Council of Churches. Metropolitan Tikhon had written to Patriarch Kirill in March 2022, asking him to do everything in his power to bring the war to an end. But asking a church leader to work for peace is not the same as publicly addressing his support for the war itself.

Whether this silence has anything to do with the OCA's historical relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate, we do not know. The question nevertheless remains: why has the OCA condemned Russian aggression without speaking just as clearly about the religious arguments used to justify it?

None of this, of course, diminishes the importance of the assistance that the OCA and IOCC provide to Ukrainian refugees. People need housing, jobs, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

But charitable work does not place a church's public statements beyond question. Nor does it place beyond question what the church chooses to leave unsaid.

Metropolitan Tikhon's appeal speaks of a terrible war, human suffering, and the Christian duty to help our neighbors. All of that is true.

But Ukrainians did not become refugees because some terrible war simply broke out in their country. They were forced from their homes by Russia's invasion.

Why, then, was there no room for this simple statement of fact in a joint appeal by two Orthodox organizations?

Writen by N7