Appeal of ‘Peace unto All’ on the occasion of the fourthanniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On 24 February 2022, the war started by the Kremlin in eastern Ukraine in 2014 took the form of a full-scale invasion. It has become the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as of the end of January 2026, civilian casualties in Ukraine numbered more than 15,000 killed and more than 40,000 wounded. Millions of people have become refugees. Prosperous cities have been reduced to ruins. The ‘descendants of the victors’ are freezing civilians by striking heating plants, just as German troops did to their ancestors who remained in besieged Leningrad in order to break their spirit. The images of crowded evacuation trains under fire and children hiding from air raids in the metro reminded us of the most terrible pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. 

Ukrainian identity is being denied, and the occupied areas are being subjected to forced Russification. "Ukraine is an insanity. When a Russian goes mad, he becomes Ukrainian," writes one of Russia's leading war ideologues, Alexander Dugin, without fear of being convicted of humiliating human dignity on national grounds (Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code). A priest who fights with weapons in his hands in the Russian army tells local residents in the occupied areas: ‘We have come not to liberate you, but to liberate from you’. The Russian gauleiter of Zaporizhia boasts about his policy towards the “liberated” Ukrainians in the occupied territories: "People behaved extremely harshly, so we had to get rid of these people, these families, and these are large families. So we gave them the opportunity to leave. Some were forcibly evicted: we brought them to the edge, read out the decision on their eviction, gave them a bottle of water and sent them on their way... We beat them - and we beat them hard. And, unfortunately, we sometimes had to make extremely tough decisions, which I will not talk about yet." The descriptions of torture, humiliation and murder that this man conceals, the memories of the survivors, are horrifying. Russian fascism, in its hatred of everything Ukrainian, has grown into Nazism. 

No one has discredited the Russian army as much as it has done itself. Generations of Russians who are not yet born will have to work long and hard to heal the wounds that are being inflicted today. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ (Matthew 7:16), says the Gospel. The fruits of the ‘Russian world’ are grief, destruction and death.

The war with Ukraine has also become a crime committed by the authorities against their own people. Under the rhetoric of ‘preserving’ it, more than a million Russian soldiers have been killed, wounded or gone missing. Another million or so have left the country to escape political repression and forced indoctrination. The freedoms of thought, speech, assembly and free dissemination of information guaranteed by the Constitution have been abolished. Military censorship in violation of the Constitution has been officially announced.

The Russian authorities have classified demographic data so that no one can learn about the catastrophic consequences of their policies. Instead of ‘demilitarising’ Ukraine, the country has demilitarised itself, being forced to resort to partial mobilisation of civilians and the participation of foreign mercenaries. An irreparable blow has been dealt to the economy, science and culture. Life in the regions bordering Ukraine has become unbearable. Propaganda not only justifies the war, but also dehumanises Ukrainians, suppressing empathy and compassion for its victims. Contrary to reality, the official Russian media brazenly claim that ‘the civilian population of Ukraine is not threatened’ (Interfax). Talk of civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side is prohibited under threat of imprisonment, and the number of political prisoners is growing.

Unprecedented cruelty has been unleashed. The slogan ‘where were you for eight years’ has become a licence to commit any evil, any violence, and not only against Ukrainians. Torture has been effectively legalised in Russian prisons. ‘Patriotic’ Telegram channels tell horror stories of unprecedented cruelty and “zeroing” suffered by victims of extortion by commanders. The ‘heroes of the SVO,’ declared by Vladimir Putin to be the ‘new elite,’ have already committed hundreds of murders throughout Russia. 

The only beneficiaries of the war in Russia are arms manufacturers and Putin's regime itself. The result of the war has been declared to be ‘consolidation around the president’ — the cementing of dictatorship. The war is vital for a small group of people to ‘tighten the screws’ and accuse those who ‘rock the boat’ of threatening national security.

Particularly outrageous is the position of the official leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate who, despite the assertion in the ‘Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’ that ‘church structures cannot assist the state in waging aggressive foreign wars,’ have proclaimed the invasion of Ukraine a ‘holy war.’ Allegedly for the benefit of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and in the name of its ‘liberation,’ its dioceses are being seized, churches are being destroyed in the course of hostilities, and Orthodox clergy and laypeople—both civilians and military personnel—are being killed. All Orthodox priests on Russian territory are forced to publicly support the war by reading the ‘prayer for Holy Russia’ for the victory of Putin's army, under threat of being banned from serving and defrocked. Patriarch Kirill has promised forgiveness of sins to all those killed in combat, including murderers, child abusers and cannibals, who have been released from Russian prisons in exchange for their willingness to take up arms again against Ukrainians defending their country. Dissenters were declared by the Patriarch to be ‘traitors to the Motherland, with all the legal consequences that follow.’ Not a single civilian victim of the conflict on the Ukrainian side was deemed worthy of his condolences, unlike the man who declared in the Kremlin: ‘We will defeat everyone, kill everyone, rob everyone we need to, and everything will be as we like it.’ According to the Patriarch, the person who made this statement ‘tried to live with sincere faith and trust in God's wise Providence.’

Today, two days after Forgiveness Sunday, we must also say something about forgiveness. The experience of post-war Europe tells us that forgiveness and reconciliation are possible under two conditions: fair trials for criminals and the truth about their crimes. As long as the truth is declared ‘fake’ and ‘discredited,’ as long as villains are declared outstanding politicians, heroes, and martyrs, the suicidal vector of the state will be directed toward moral, cultural, and economic degradation.

We call for an immediate end to hostilities, the liberation of occupied territories, prisoners of war and political prisoners, reparations and the trial of those guilty of planning, preparing, unleashing and waging an aggressive war (Article 353 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and crimes accompanying the war.

We call for intensified prayer, including before images that preserve the memory of military aggressions—the Vladimir Icon, stolen by Andrei Bogolyubsky from the Kiev lands, and the Novgorod Icon of the Sign of the Most Holy Mother of God, on whose face there is still a mark from an arrow: ‘All the Russian regiments began to advance on the city. And arrows flew at the city like torrential rain. Then, by God's will, the icon turned its face towards the city, and the archbishop saw tears flowing from the icon’ (The Tale of the Battle of Novgorodians with Suzdalites).

We also call upon the saints who were not afraid to raise their voices against violence and injustice: St. Philip of Moscow, St. Maximus the Greek, one of the most prominent ‘foreign agents’ in the history of the Russian Church, and the holy martyrs and anti-fascists of the 20th century — Mother Maria Skobtsova, Archimandrite Gregory Peradze, Alexander Shmorel, for whom there was no place in the terrifying ‘temple of the armed forces.’

We also call on all Orthodox Churches and the entire global Christian community to adequately assess the false teachings of the ‘holy war,’ as was done by the Conference of European Churches in December 2025.

We also call on everyone not to be afraid to speak the truth, not to turn a blind eye to lies and lawlessness, and to help the unfortunate and persecuted, bringing about a long-awaited and just peace.

Board of  NGO ''Peace Unto All''

Priest Valerian Dunin-Barkovsky

Archpriest Andrey Kordochkin 

Musician Pavel Fakhrtdinov