Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Kiev monastery a sanctuary for battered protesters

Reuters - The injured, bloodied and bandaged, lay beneath icons and candles on the floor of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery.

The combat fatigues and green helmets of some recalled the primitive field hospitals of distant wars.

As the death toll climbed from Ukraine's bloodiest day in two decades of independence, the wounded sought refuge on Wednesday beneath the bell tower of a sympathetic Kiev church.

Volunteers sorted through medical supplies - iodine, gauze, bandages - brought in bags and boxes by anxious residents of the capital. Doctors tended to the wounded on beds in a side-building of the monastery complex, while people hurried through the main doors clutching bottled water, bread, ham and processed cheese.

It was a scene of quiet determination and order, a short walk uphill from the black smoke and violence of Independence Square, crucible of a geopolitical battle between Russia and the West.
Read the rest here.

Note: The monastery belongs to one of the schismatic branches of the Ukrainian Church.

2 comments:

Jason said...

The riots are being led from Berlin. Opposition leaders Vitaly Klitschko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk met with Merkel in Berlin the day before this kicked into high gear, and the day after Klitschko promised the use of force. We are witnessing yet another incursion from Western Europe into the Russian sphere. And, as appropriate for this latest episode, one of the main collaborating groups of the Ukrainian opposition has Nazi ties.

See these links for more details:

http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58723

http://spitfirelist.com/news/update-on-the-oun-b-and-the-ukrainian-crisis/

Visibilium said...

Since the pro-West western Ukraine has traditionally been persecuted for its ambition by Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, we can't expect too much leadership creativity from Orthodox Moscow toward the nationalist Autocephalous and Kyivan churches.