Met. Luke: I saw not only horrors of war, but also humanity of people

Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhia and Melitopol, head of the Zaporizhia Eparchy of the UOC, who accompanied the humanitarian cargo for Mariupol together with the priests of the diocese, said in an interview that he saw not only the horrors of the war, but also the humanity of ordinary people.

The interview was published on the Facebook page of the press secretary of the Zaporizhia Eparchy, Archpriest Gennady Yelin.

The column of buses could not go further than Berdiansk, and on Wednesday, March 16, about 400 civilians from Mariupol were taken to Zaporizhia, who were able to get to Berdiansk, as well as 130 children from the Berdiansk boarding school.

According to Metropolitan Luke, he found himself in such a military situation for the first time, although he got into a conflict situation earlier in April 2014 in Zaporizhia, when there was a confrontation between Maidan and Anti-Maidan supporters.

“This day went down in the history of Zaporizhia as ‘Egg Sunday’. In addition, my mother was born in 1942. She knew the horrors of the post-war period, the famine. In 2014, I already lived in Zaporizhia, while my mother lived in Donetsk, near the Donetsk airport. Because of the constant bombing of the latter, my mother lay in the bathroom for three days (in a cast-iron trough). A person with diabetes mellitus, hypertensive, she did not eat anything. They were bombed, continually bombed! During the armistice, I managed to evacuate her. In March 2015, I was in my destroyed house for the last time. Now she is with me in Zaporizhia. Is she really going to experience this horror for the third time in her life?!” the hierarch of the UOC said.

Metropolitan Luke said that he still cannot come to his senses from the stories of the surviving people from Mariupol.

“Now I can’t even speak calmly, I still can’t move away from what I had to go through, from the stories that we heard, from the people who escaped from Mariupol, what we saw. This is something that even the most brilliant directors with the most talented actors cannot do, nor can the most talented writers describe in books. The emotions and feelings that we encountered cannot be conveyed until you yourself experience this horror in your own skin. It is impossible to understand how serious all this was and how much it all was ... hard. It’s incredibly difficult morally, I won’t hide it,” he added.

The first attempt to leave for Mariupol took place on March 11, but they left only early in the morning on March 12. The first stop was in Vasilievka, the Russian side was checking, there was shelling in the distance, when it ended, the column was let through. On this day, we managed to get to Berdiansk. On Sunday, the column reached the checkpoint in Mariupol. The convoy was not allowed to go further than this checkpoint until Tuesday, and on Tuesday they saw the first residents of Mariupol who “escaped from hell”.

“They got out in their own cars from the besieged city. It's scary, of course. It was terrible to see people beaten, crippled, bandaged, with bloody bandages due to shrapnel wounds. In an old Zhiguli car there is a father, a mother with a baby in her arms, in the back seat there are children, each smaller than the other, and on the trailer a 15-year-old guy with a bandaged head, in a light jacket, wrapped in a blanket, is sitting on the preserved belongings. People were crying hysterically, telling the things one can't even imagine. Many of them lost their relatives and friends. One mother asked me, ‘Have you ever seen a dog drinking water from a puddle? That's how our children drank because we didn't have water!’" Metropolitan Luke continued.

“A plane comes in and drops bombs, one bomb is a ton. The plane flew away – the Grads came. A plane arrived – and so five planes a day. In-between the planes – Grads. There is no city; it is easier to list what is left than what is destroyed ... Hunger. Cold. No communication… From time to time there was occasional communication only in one place until the tower was bombed,” he added. 

Together with his assistants, Vladyka began to accommodate refugees in Berdiansk. According to him, the Berdiansk clergy, local volunteers opened schools, brought food, tried to warm people despite the fact that there is no heat in Berdiansk due to a broken gas pipeline. A field kitchen was set up at the cathedral, where people could eat hot food twice a day.

“People told their stories. It's terrible – people have lost many of their loved ones. There are hundreds of corpses in Mariupol, they were simply not counted or buried. Those who had the strength buried the dead bodies right next to the entrance, in a yard or a square, in the resulting funnel. So, we were told about one mass grave, where 176 people were buried. There is no one to dismantle the rubble under which there can be people. Many are simply afraid to come out of their shelters,” Metropolitan Luke continued.

“People are sitting in bomb shelters, in basements; close explosions of bombs and shells caused fires and smoke in their shelters. It was impossible to breathe, so they would run out into the air, but then were hit shelling by Grads or bombing from aircraft again and torn to pieces. All this occurred in front of their children. People thought they were going insane. I just stopped listening to stories like this. I couldn't stand it! I am a priest, a doctor, I have seen and heard a lot in my life, but I have never seen or heard anything like this,” the UOC hierarch continued in a trembling voice.

On Wednesday, the military said they had received an order to escort the convoy to Zaporizhia. The priests unloaded the trucks in two hours. Together with the convoy, more than 500 people, along with their children, were taken out.

“On this trip, I met with humanity, with the active fulfillment of the commandment of love for one's neighbor ... I met with ordinary people who gave their last, seeing the afflictions of other people. We don’t know this yet, God forbid, to learn it from our own experience,” said Metropolitan Luke and urged to turn to God.

“We cannot lose the human image. Forgetting God, betraying Him, we got what we deserved. We were well-fed, satisfied, each had their own ambitions, their own pride. Now we are looking for the guilty, but he who multiplies sin is to blame. Man has grown sins, malice and hatred in his heart, which has filled the cup of God's wrath. This malice and hatred has now spilled out onto our land. But I also know that even if we add up all the sins of all the past, present and future of mankind, they still cannot overshadow the mercy of God, which will inevitably bestow on us if we repent,” summed up Metropolitan Luke.

As the UOJ reported earlier, Metropolitan Luke and the clergy accompanied a group of refugees to Zaporizhia.

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