Brother Archons and All People of Good Will Around the World:

The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (AEP) condemns the shocking and horrific Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025, which killed at least 34 people and injured well over a hundred more.

Russia, as an Orthodox Christian nation, should have spent Palm Sunday in prayer and worship, celebrating the Entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and the beginning of Holy Week. Instead, it had the demonic audacity to launch missile strikes on this holy day against a city in a brother Orthodox nation, against which it has been carrying out an unjustifiable and unprovoked war for over three years now.

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has repeatedly condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine, and has decried the fact that throughout this war, Russian hierarchs “gladly bless the sacred weapons, the murderous ones, against the Orthodox Ukrainians who defend the territorial integrity of their country.”

On this Palm Sunday, those weapons even targeted an area near a church, turning one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Christian calendar into a day of fear and terror, with Orthodox worshipers, many of them advanced in years, fleeing in panic, while others’ lives were snuffed out in the blasts.

The victims in Sumy were civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “Only villains can act in this way, taking the lives of ordinary people.”

This attack was not just a violation of the rules of warfare; it was a monumental sin against God. It was a sacrilegious act that offers a deathly and demonic parody of Palm Sunday: on the day that the Blessed Savior enters Jerusalem, bringing with Him reconciliation, salvation and redemption for the world, Russian missiles enter an Orthodox land bringing bloodshed destruction, and horror.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew stated that “the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church, recognizing the right of our 40-45 million Ukrainian brothers and sisters to have an independent church, free from Moscow’s control. A little later, in February 2022, Moscow began bombing and killing them, proving it was not their mother church, but their enemy.” Vladimir Putin and the Moscow Patriarchate now stand before the world not just as enemies of Orthodox Christians, but as killers of Orthodox Christians.

It was in October 2022 that His All-Holiness said: “I expected brother Kirill to rise to the occasion at this critical historical moment, and if needed, to sacrifice his Throne, to tell Putin, ‘Mr. President, I can’t agree with you, I resign, I’m leaving.’” Now, more than ever, the Patriarch of Moscow should heed this prophetic call.

The murderous Palm Sunday attack on Sumy should be a sobering reminder to world leaders of their sacred responsibility to do all they possibly can to end this conflict, and to tell Putin and Kirill that enough innocent lives have been lost, enough blood has been shed, enough horror and destruction has been rained upon people who were simply going about the activities of their daily lives.

We call on all people of faith and all people of good will, of every religious tradition and worldview, to join us in praying and working for peace in Ukraine now, before the horrifying scenes in Sumy are repeated elsewhere.

Holy Week is the beginning of the Lord’s journey to the Cross, and to His glorious Resurrection. Let the cross that is being borne by so many of His people in Sumy on this Palm Sunday be the impetus for a Resurrection of peace and reconciliation in Ukraine and throughout the world.

Yours in the service of the Holy Mother Church,