Chaplain of UGCC: The nation gains more from the war in Donbass than loses

The Uniate Chaplain Nikolai Medinsky stated that the armed conflict in the Donbass has a number of positive aspects for Ukraine. He said this in the programme "The Voice of the People, the Voice of God" on Radio Maria, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Ilovaisk tragedy.

The priest is convinced that even if the soldiers died in the Donbass are not officially canonized by the Church, "The Lord has already prepared for them the place and glory of the saints. Indeed, these warriors, these children who died in the struggle for the state, defending life on our Ukrainian land, are glorified as saints of the Ukrainian people."

"What is happening in the East of Ukraine is the process of purification of the Ukrainian nation’s organism. We are losing a lot, but we are gain even more," Medinsky said.

"The blood of our sons, our children, the martyrs of faith in the Ukrainian state idea also bears fruit – this is the resurrection of our nation, the revival of our people. In the near future, the fruit of the establishment of a fully-fledged Ukrainian state will ripen. Such a fruit, which the confessors of faith, the martyrs of our Ukrainian Church and the fighters for the statehood had dreamed of, starting from princely times to brave Cossacks with long toupees and the stern UPA warriors," the UGCC cleric is convinced.

Medinsky considers the idea that war is bad, that it "leads us into some abyss, into oblivion" to be the Kremlin propaganda. He believes that on the contrary, thanks to the war, the Ukrainian nation rose from its knees.

Earlier, in St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral of Kiev, representatives of the Kiev Patriarchate "consecrated" a new "icon", depicting the soldiers fighting in the Donbass and the participants of the Maidan, and in the Lviv region, at the memorial near Zhbyr Mount, an icon of soldiers of the SS division "Galicia" was placed.