Letter from Ukraine: ‘Even though I’m a priest, I have the full moral right to take up arms’: A Ukrainian man of the cloth fights to defend his country
ODESSA, Ukraine — When the first bombs landed on Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson in the early morning of Thursday, Feb. 24, Father Maxim Kapelan knew exactly what to do.
“Those first three days flew by like one,” he told MarketWatch. “There was no time for sleep, for eating or even for praying.” “There’s no justification for it. We all speak Russian in Kherson,” she told MarketWatch on Tuesday. “No one’s ever been discriminated against here. There are no Nazis here. We never asked Russia to save us.”
The only access point to Kherson from the East is across the Antonivka Bridge, on the edge of Kherson town. Over a kilometer long, the bridge was the first major target for Russian forces arriving from Crimea later in the morning.Like many people across Ukraine, Father Maxim believes he has no choice but to fight in what is an existential war — and he sees no contradiction in his dual life as a fighter and a priest.
The majority of civilian and military casualties happened on the first day. According to eyewitnesses, dead bodies were everywhere. Merged with a larger force, the Ukrainians stood their ground outside Nikolaev’s main airport and formed what is now the new front line in the battle for Ukraine’s south coast.
“I didn’t leave the house for days — just stayed at home like mice. It was terrifying,” she said. “They destroyed the military buildings in the city. Apartment blocks were attacked. They even bombed the central market. The most frightening sound was of the bomber jets overhead. For days, all I felt was fear.”
“The enemy is not even allowing deliveries into Kherson,” Vadym Denysenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, said. “When people try to get in, the Russian military personnel stop them, fire at them, throw them out of their cars and intimidate them.” The Russians are refusing to organize “green corridors” to allow civilians to leave, Denysenko told the people. This decision to purposefully make life worse for civilians is consistent with Russia’s warfare playbook from previous campaigns in both Chechnya and Syria. “From what we can understand, this is the personal instruction from Vladimir Putin,” Denysenko said.
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