The Ukrainian military ask the Pope for help from “hell in Mariupol”

Pope Francis has become one of the last hopes of the Ukrainians who are still in Mariupol to get out alive before the advance of the Russian invaders. Sergiy Volyna, commander of the 36th brigade of the Ukrainian marines who are besieged in this port city on the Sea of ​​Azov, has written a letter to Jorge Mario Bergoglio in which he asks for his help in evacuating the civilians who still remain in Mariúpol and thus prevent them from falling “into the hands of Satan”, who, according to the Ukrainian military officer, implicitly referring to the Russian aggressors, intends to “burn all living beings”.

Commander Volyna, who confesses to being Orthodox and not Catholic, assures that prayers “are no longer enough” in the face of the situation in Mariupol, which he describes as “hell on earth”. Although he maintains that Bergoglio, 85, will have seen “a lot” in his life, he is sure that he has never come across a reality like the one this Ukrainian city has been facing since the Russian invasion began on 24 December. february. “I have little time to describe all the horrors I see here every day. In the factory, women with children and newborn babies live in a bunker in the middle of hunger and cold. Every day they are under the crosshairs of enemy planes. The wounded die every day because there is not enough medicine, water or food », the Ukrainian military man writes to the Pope in his letter, the content of which has been published by local media and amplified by social networks.

Volyna presents himself as an officer who has taken an “oath of allegiance to his country” and says he is ready to fight “until the end” despite “the overwhelming force of the enemy”, the “inhuman conditions of the battlefield” and the lack of of “water, food and medicine”. In the letter, the Ukrainian officer acknowledges that he has not had time to see the Pope’s calls for peace in Ukraine, since he has been fighting “for more than 50 days.” “It is a fierce battle for every meter of this city, which is surrounded by the enemy,” says Volyna.

Although his request for help to the bishop of Rome has already reached the Vatican, it is unlikely that Francis’ intervention will change the situation of the civilian population still trapped in Mariupol. Since the invasion began almost two months ago, Bergoglio has unsuccessfully multiplied calls for an end to the fighting in Ukraine and has even shown himself willing to travel to kyiv, from where he has been invited by both the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

At the Palm Sunday mass, Bergoglio encouraged the establishment of an “Easter truce” without obtaining a response from the Moscow authorities, while in his message last Sunday prior to the ‘Urbi et Orbi’ blessing, he asked that we not “get used to war” and described as “cruel and senseless” the war that is bleeding Ukraine.