People living in Kyiv surely never forget that they inhabit a war zone, but the missile attack on Oct. 10 still managed to come as something of a shock. It had been months since the last time Kyiv was hit. The rockets rained down on the capital hours after Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin condemned an attack on the Kerch Strait bridge connecting Russia to Crimea as an act of terror.
“Actually I was out trying to jog that morning, and three rockets landed exactly on my route,” said Andriy Zelinskyy, S.J., a lecturer at Ukrainian Catholic University and a Ukrainian army chaplain. He was detoured along with thousands of others into the impromptu bomb shelter of the Kyiv subway system.
The missile and, with growing frequency, drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure have accelerated in near proportion to the Russian army’s diminishing showing on the battlefield, an apparent strategy of “winning” by wearing down the public’s will to fight. Father Zelinskyy does not think that will work.
People living in Kyiv surely never forget that they inhabit a war zone, but the missile attack on Oct. 10 still managed to come as something of a shock.
In the city’s central subway station that morning, he heard the people of Kyiv joined together in patriotic song as they waited for the all-clear to be sounded.
The myths of the Ukraine war
“Look, it’s not fun to be attacked in the morning by Russian missiles,” he said. The horror of the experience was evident in the eyes of the people he saw in the subway. But he does not think that the Ukrainian people will break under this latest onslaught. “We have already seen so much,” he said. “We’ve lost more than 100,000 lives. Most of them are civilians.
“I’ve been witnessing civilian deaths since February, and of course, as a military chaplain, I’ve been on the front line since 2014. But the idea that there is an invincible, horrible, something worse, and ‘Let’s not wake it up’? That’s a myth.”
It is not the only one connected to this war, he argued.
“The whole international order since World War Two was based on the fact that there is an invincible Russian army. People: It’s a myth.”
Ukraine’s national army was not ranked anywhere near the top global militaries, he pointed out. Now it is holding its own and then some against the presumed superpower. Russia’s technological advantage has proved illusory in the field of battle. “Russians are as mortal as anybody else in this world,” Father Zelinskyy said.
“The whole international order since World War Two was based on the fact that there is an invincible Russian army. People: It’s a myth.”
Like the citizens of Kyiv, the morale of the Ukrainian army along the 620-mile front is strong, according to Father Zelinskyy. Ukrainian soldiers are not burdened with “ideological” baggage, he explained. They simply know they are in a fight for their lives, their families and the survival of Ukraine as an independent state.
“These are not all professional military,” he said, but an army of citizens. “These are opera singers. These are teachers and university professors. They are the best the nation has.”
And the nation is losing too many of its best. “That pain,” he said, “can have its own beauty. What we witness is very tragic…but it is so authentic.” It is about the “love that we see in the Gospel.”
“It’s not because we want war; it’s not because we want to fight,” he said. “It’s just us, the people; we defend ourselves.”
Ukrainians hear that leaders in the West are looking for an opening to a negotiation that might end the war, Father Zelinskyy said. He knows they are fearful that Mr. Putin’s possible use of tactical nuclear weapons could lead to unimaginable consequences.
“These are not all professional military,” he said, but an army of citizens. “These are opera singers. These are teachers and university professors. They are the best the nation has.”
But how can such negotiations even begin, he wonders, when Ukraine is faced with such an implacable foe?
“Maybe the West is too far away from Moscow, so you can’t hear what they say, that Ukrainians don’t exist, that the Ukrainian state should not exist. And that’s it.
“We are left with no choice” but to continue fighting, he said.
How are negotiations possible, he asked, when the Russian opening position is: “Either you do what we want or we kill you.”
Mr. Putin and various other cultural and political leaders in Russia have made it clear that they are willing to kill as many Ukranians as possible, he said, if that will mean the inclusion of Ukraine in Mr. Putin’s dream of a Greater Russia. Why should Ukranians fear the use of a nuclear weapon?
“It’s horrible. But so what?” he said. “They’re killing us already since Feb. 24—massively.” A tactical nuke is just another kind of mass destruction. Does it matter if you are killed with a gun or a missile or a nuclear bomb? he asked.
Assessing the nuclear risks
Maryann Cusimano Love, an associate professor of International Relations at The Catholic University of America in Washington, noted the irony that Mr. Putin’s threats have to be mulled over this month, during the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then, she said, President John Kennedy put the chances of nuclear war at one in three.
“Maybe the West is too far away from Moscow, so you can’t hear what they say, that Ukrainians don’t exist, that the Ukrainian state should not exist.”
“What most Americans don’t know is that President Kennedy was exactly correct about that assessment,” Dr. Cusimano Love said. In the end, it was the decision of one submarine commander not to launch—voting against two other commanders as the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges around them—that prevented the unthinkable in 1962.
And that is the kind of battlefield risk that haunts Dr. Cusimano Love at this perilous moment. She explained that the United States relies on a “nuclear monarchy” decision-making process on the use of nuclear weapons—a protocol with its own unique risks, relying as it does on presidential rationality and temperament.
But the decentralized process the Russian Federation inherited from the Soviet Union substantially raises the threat of a “fog of war” style misstep or miscommunication that could lead to essentially an accidental use of tactical nuclear weapons. At that point, the confrontation could spiral dangerously out of control. Dr. Cusimano Love will be among the presenters at a forum at Fordham University on Oct. 26, “New Nukes and New Risks: The Peril of Nuclear Weapons in an Unstable World.” The event will be dedicated to the work and memory of America’s late editor in chief, Drew Christiansen, S.J.
If the decision to deploy tactical nukes were entirely left to Mr. Putin, Dr. Cusimano Love believes the clock may be ticked back a second or two from nuclear midnight. “It’s a dangerous game trying to get inside the brain of Putin,” she said, “but my sense of it is that he gets the maximum leverage from the threat of use and much less value from the actual use.” She believes Mr. Putin will continue to raise the nuclear option to discourage deeper involvement by NATO in the conflict and to terrorize the Ukrainian people into a capitulation.
But the spectacle of Mr. Putin’s escalating threats has had the unintended effect of demonstrating that “nuclear weapons are not actually very useful,” she argued.
“We find across the globe that nuclear weapons do not have much utility at all, in terms of changing…the outcomes of war,” Dr. Cusimano Love said. After the Second World War, “the erroneous thought was the United States had the bomb in its back pocket and that this would translate into tangible gains across political and military affairs…but it’s never worked that way.”
In fact, Putin-style brinkmanship can backfire, when “the threat actually consolidates resistance to the adversary.”
“All indications are that that is what is occurring today in Ukraine,” she said.
‘Peace is a matter of justice’
“Putin is a creature actually of the West,” Father Zelinskyy said, “of the fears and of the immaturity to call things the way they are.
“Now we have a nuclear threat. Well, [the threat] didn’t start yesterday. It began at the time when we were not courageous enough to call things by their proper names.”
“Now we have a nuclear threat. Well, [the threat] didn’t start yesterday. It began at the time when we were not courageous enough to call things by their proper names.”
He pointed out that while limited sanctions were initiated in 2014, in the end the international community largely shrugged off Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its sponsorship of separatists in Donbas.
“That’s how evil functions. If we don’t name it, tomorrow we may not be able to [overtake] it.” Getting on to some path to de-escalation, he said, is not just about what actions Ukraine should take. “It’s about the crazy man who has nuclear weapons. And unfortunately, this politics of appeasing him leads only so far.
“Peace is a matter of justice, and justice is a matter of truth,” Father Zelinskyy said. “We are responsible for Mr. Putin. That’s our collective responsibility…. So let’s deal with this.”
Ukraine and the West cannot knuckle under to Putin’s nuclear blackmail, Father Zelinskyy insisted. “There are no other choices,” he said, except to “pray for him” and “pray for the conversion of Russia. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Let’s not be afraid. This is what Jesus taught us, and sometimes we forget about this. ‘Be not afraid:’ If you’re on the part of truth, if you’re on the part of good, everything else is in God’s hands.”
Bracing for a new refugee crisis
While Father Zelinskyy remains resolute in Kyiv, a fellow Ukrainian Jesuit In Poland, Vitaliy Osmolovskyy, continues his work with a Jesuit-sponsored assistance program for Ukrainian refugees, helping them settle into new homes, find new jobs and, for some of them, begin new lives. Most of the refugees still hope to return to Ukraine someday, Father Osmolovskyy said, but an increasing number of the families he is working with, perhaps as much as 20 percent, now plan to settle permanently in Poland. Their children are safe and enrolled in Polish schools, and they see little chance of a near-term end to the war, he explained.
“Peace is a matter of justice, and justice is a matter of truth,” Father Zelinskyy said. “We are responsible for Mr. Putin. That’s our collective responsibility…. So let’s deal with this.”
The refugee children he visits increasingly speak to him in Polish, showing an aptitude for adaptation and assimilation Father Osmolovskyy simultaneously welcomes and dreads. He worries that the Ukrainian language and culture may soon be forgotten among this refugee generation.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukranians crowded the border at the beginning of the conflict in February, but as the war dragged on the refugee flow into Poland has greatly diminished. And as Ukraine army forces reclaim territory that had been seized by Russia, some refugees are even venturing back to Ukraine to visit family members left behind or to see what is left of their homes and communities.
“Ukrainians are a people of the soil,” Father Osmolovskyy said. “They want to go back and rebuild.”
His own parents have never left, though their city, home to a Ukrainian military base near the border with Belarus, has frequently been subjected to Russian strikes. The couple joined the Ukrainian territorial defense and despite his appeals have refused to visit him in Poland, even if only for a short respite.
According to the United Nations, about 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees are being hosted by Poland. Altogether 7.7 million Ukrainians have fled to bordering states and across Europe. Another 6.24 million Ukrainians have been displaced within the nation’s borders.
Father Osmolovskyy expects a new wave of refugees as winter begins and many are forced to give up on repairing war-damaged homes. He is gathering winter clothes and other gear and seeking to establish a second shelter site in Warsaw.
Auxiliary Bishop Jan Sobilo of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia, in an interview with Catholic News Service on Oct. 21, warned that the current waves of Russian air strikes on energy infrastructure can only make the refugee crisis worse.
He explained that friends on their way to the front call and ask for prayers. “Mostly they ask me, ‘If I’m going to be killed, just please help my family, my wife and my kids.’”
He said, “Many who never previously considered leaving are now in western Ukraine or have left the country…. If there’s no water, gas or electricity in their homes, how can they stay there?”
In addition to assisting with survival needs, housing and job placement, the Jesuits in Poland have been offering psychological counseling and educational programming for refugee children. Father Osmolovskyy added that the Jesuits hope to one day support reconciliation and peace building. There is no point to begin that work now, he said, explaining that first “the offender has to ask for forgiveness.”
The refugee experience has driven some to hold more tightly to their faith, he said. Others have abandoned it, feeling abandoned by God themselves. “[John] The Evangelist says, ‘God is love,’ although in such moments, it is hard to see it,” Father Osmolovskyy said.
“Even for me, it’s a hard time.” He explained that friends on their way to the front call and ask for prayers. “Mostly they ask me, ‘If I’m going to be killed, just please help my family, my wife and my kids.’” They must leave their mobile phones behind to prevent geo-location by Russian artillery forces. Often he will not find out for days what has happened to them.
This, he admitted, feels like a huge burden.
But, he added, reviving slightly, “Our task as Jesuits, as human beings, is to support every person without exception, to be the light of hope, the light of Easter, the light of peace,” even if the times have surely made that task difficult.
Editor’s note: If you wish to make a donation to support the Jesuit relief program in Poland, please contact vosmolovskisj@gmail.com.
