This is the story of two people radically different in their ways of being but united like flesh and blood for a cause. Like the vast majority of the Ukrainian people, be they men or women, young or old, atheists or believers.
By her appearance, by her way of dressing and by her perfect English, 22-year-old Iarina Arieva gives the impression that her natural environment would be a cool coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York. What fate had in store for her was to get married in the Church on the day the invasion began, February 24, 2022, and the next day wield a rifle as a volunteer, with her husband, of the Territorial Forces of Defense Today she fights against the Russian invasion as a councilor in the government of the city of Kyiv.
Father Andrà Holavin is the rector of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Butxa, a town north of the capital whose name the war has made synonymous with Russian barbarism in its greatest expression. Twice Iarina’s age, he is tall, thin, stern in his purple robes but serene despite the pain of having presided over he does not remember how many funeral masses for soldiers killed at the front or for civilians killed at gunpoint, more of 70, in the vicinity of its imposing church.
I met Iarina by chance on Sunday in the grounds of a monastery in Kyiv belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose Pope is Patriarch Kirill, a billionaire ex-KGB agent, friend and propagandist of Putin, who declared in September that all Russian soldiers who gave their lives in the Ukrainian war would see “all their sins washed away”.
Iarina led a demonstration that demanded the withdrawal of the Russian Orthodox Church and all its monks from the country. “Russian priests, go home!” shouted the demonstrators, who were few, about 40, as well as the number of policemen who formed a wall to defend the monastery from any possible aggression.
“All of us here have relatives or friends who have died at the hands of Russians in this war”, Iarina told me. “And here is the enemy, right in the center of our capital, an instrument of Russian propaganda that has polluted minds and destroyed souls for decades, and continues to do so today.”
Doesn’t it irritate you – I asked – that the police protect them? “Yes – he answered me – but this is what differentiates Ukraine from Russia and, despite the hatred I feel for these people, some of them agents of the Russian intelligence services, there is a principle of democracy and justice here that I understand we must defend”.
Three days later, on Wednesday, I met Mr. Butxa. The town continues to mourn, drags the aftermath like few of the Russian attempt to conquer Ukraine a year ago, and there are lots of buildings destroyed by tanks and Russian aviation, but the church – with its golden domes and its white and blue walls – remains intact, and so does the rector’s morale.
In the lower part of the temple, in a crypt full of images, I asked him if he shared Iarina’s indignation at the continued presence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. I shared it.
“Imagine that the Catholic Church in England had supported the Nazis during the Second World War”, he replied. “Well, this is what it means for the Russian Orthodox Church to continue in Ukrainian territory.”
Father Andrà finds it particularly offensive that Putin’s friend who heads the Russian Church not only praised the invasion of Ukraine but, days after the massacre of civilians in Bucha came to light, thanked the Russian troops for their “deeds in favor of the motherland”.
“What corresponds to the Russian Orthodox Church is to offer the penitential example that recent history demands. Look at the Germans. They did terrible things but they admitted it, faced their sins, atoned for them and for the last 75 years or more their country has been an example of decency and peace.
“The Russians under Stalin committed crimes equal to or worse than the Nazis. But not only do they not accept it, but Putin today glorifies the figure of Stalin. With this attitude, it is no surprise that they continue to commit atrocities today in Butxa and throughout Ukraine.”
He is also not surprised that the Russian Church has failed in what he considers to be its Christian mission of asking for forgiveness. “It is not an independent church. Since the time of Stalin, precisely, it has been an organ of the State. Today it seems that it is more than ever”.
“It is a political issue; not a matter of faith. Even I am willing to admit that there are chaplains within the Russian Orthodox Church who are against Putin. The problem is that if they declare themselves as such they are expelled from the Church, or worse”.
What do you think about the Ukrainian police protecting the Russian monastery against the rage, and possible violence, of like-minded people?
“Our police apply the law and we are proud of that. We Ukrainians feel like Europeans, not subjects of a Russian empire that has been defined by poverty, by death, by trampling on people. We fight for democracy and justice and these rights must be extended to everyone who is in Ukrainian territory”.
I asked father Andrà one last question. What did he think would happen to him if he had his church in Moscow and used it to preach against the Russian invasion?
After a silence, he gave me a smile that was both complicit and sardonic and said: “I don’t even want to begin to imagine it.”
