Video Message of the Head of the UGCC on the 183rd Week of the Full-Scale War, August 17, 2025
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
Another week of the vicious war has passed. It is now the 183rd week since Russian troops invaded peaceful Ukrainian territory. This week will be remembered by the international community, and especially by Ukrainians, for the summit between the leaders of the United States and Russia, which took place on August 15 in Alaska.
Ukraine and the Ukrainian people continue to pray and fight for peace. We long for an end to this war. Yet despite these international efforts, even at the very moment of that high-level meeting, Russia did not cease its killings in Ukraine. They fired missiles at the central market in the city of Sumy. Our cities and villages in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions once again came under fire. Heavy fighting continued unabated along the entire front line.
Today, however, we express our sincere gratitude to all who are exerting unprecedented international pressure on the aggressor to halt its murderous hand. We are grateful to all who support Ukraine and are doing everything possible to bring about the long-awaited peace. But as we observe the negotiations at the highest international level, we understand that this is only the beginning.
It marks the beginning of a series of meetings—the beginning, we hope, of a serious search for a way to end this war. Yet against the backdrop of the various ideas and opinions voiced by presidents, diplomats, and experts, I must once again stress: Ukraine is not merely a territory. To speak of ending the war while focusing only on land—its exchange or the recognition of its temporary occupation—is utterly inadequate.
We remind the world once again: Ukraine is its people. Ukraine is its nation. And even when discussion turns to occupied territories, we ask that at the highest international level the focus remain on the people who have become victims of occupation. We ask that human rights be returned to the negotiating table—specifically, the right to life and to freedom. For us, the right to be called Ukrainian. The right to belong to a nation of millions.
Let it be clear: Russia is not fighting for territory in Ukraine, but for influence. If Russia succeeds in shaping the minds of presidents, diplomats, and the international community with its neo-colonial ideology, that ideology will corrupt the hearts, souls, minds, and consciences of modern humanity from within.
We hope that these international efforts will bear fruit. But once again, on behalf of the people of Ukraine, I wish to repeat the words you all know well: Ukraine stands. Ukraine fights. Ukraine prays.
This week we celebrated one of the most significant Christian feasts of the year—the Dormition of the Mother of God. And by God’s marvelous providence, all the most important international events related to the search for peace in Ukraine took place on this very day.
Today, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who responded to the call to prayer and fasting and faithfully observed the final day of the Dormition Fast, on August 14 this year. I thank our bishops, monks, nuns, priests, the faithful, and all people of goodwill who, through prayer and fasting, implored the Lord to deliver us from the clutches of war—from the bondage into which humanity falls when it wages war and then cannot free itself by its own strength.
I also thank all the pilgrims who came to our Marian pilgrimage centers on the feast of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where we prayed together, accompanying these historic events with our supplications. I thank you most sincerely. I believe that God will accept our sacrifice and bless our land with the peace for which we so earnestly pray.
This Sunday, here in Kyiv, our Church is also living through very special and memorable days. We are marking the 30th anniversary of the restoration of the Kyiv Metropolia and the 20th anniversary of the return of the seat of the Father and Head of the Church to its historic place—the capital city of Kyiv.
We began the celebrations yesterday with an All-Ukrainian youth pilgrimage to the Patriarchal Cathedral. For our young people, it was especially important to come to the sources of their Church, so that we might once again refute the clichés of Moscow’s propaganda and bear witness to the true Kyiv roots of our Church.
A moving moment of this youth pilgrimage was the veneration of the relics of St. Volodymyr, Equal-to-the-Apostles and Grand Prince. In this way, we were reminded anew that our Church is the Church of Kyiv, the Church born of the Baptism of Volodymyr. We did not emerge from the Union of Brest; rather, we came to it, bringing with us the desire to restore the unity of the one Kyiv Church—a unity once so vital, now sadly lost.
Today we continued these celebrations, and I am grateful to all our bishops and pilgrims who came to Kyiv, to our Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ.
The thirty years of restoration of our Church in Kyiv have been years of growth, years filled with many achievements and abundant fruit. We give thanks to God for the gift of our Patriarchal Cathedral, for the rebirth of the Kyiv Archeparchy and our exarchates. We sense that God has been preparing our Church throughout these years so that we might reach maturity, ready to respond to the enormous tragedy of the war we now endure.
In the context of this pilgrimage, we heard the prophetic, timeless words of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who once said: “Not only in the depths of the Middle Ages, but also in the future, Ukrainian Kyiv will play an important, and perhaps decisive, role for all of Europe, especially Western Europe.”
It is striking that he spoke these words at a time when Kyiv was not Ukrainian and when Ukraine did not yet exist as an independent state. Yet he already foresaw the significant role that Ukrainian Kyiv would one day play for Europe and for the world. And now, with the revival of our Church in Kyiv, we see this role taking shape ever more clearly.
Here in Kyiv, the cradle of our Christianity, we give thanks to God for all the gifts we have received. We renew the Covenant with Him, the same Covenant our ancestors made at their baptism in the waters of the Dnipro: “God, we want to be Your people, and You will be our God.”
We renewed this Covenant when our Patriarchal Cathedral was consecrated twelve years ago. This mutual belonging—us to God and God to us—today shapes the very identity of Ukraine: our people, our culture, and our Church. Therefore, remembering this Covenant and recalling the great deeds the Lord has done for us in recent decades, we give Him thanks and implore: Bless, O Lord, Your children! Bless our Church! Do not allow the murderous hand of the aggressor to destroy all that has been reborn in these thirty years.
O God, bless Ukraine with Your righteous and heavenly peace.
The blessing of the Lord be upon you, through His grace and love for mankind, always, now and forever, and for the ages of ages. Amen.
