Deploring “the genocide of the Ukrainian people, committed by Russian troops in the Kyiv region,” the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) called on “world leaders, NATO, and the EU to provide Ukraine with all the necessary weaponry to defeat Russia as a terrorist state, including air defense systems, fighter jets, lethal offensive weapons, tanks, and anti-ship missiles.”

“The whole world should realize that this is not a ‘Ukrainian crisis,’ it is not even a ‘war of Russia against Ukraine’—it is a war of humanity, moral values, virtue with concentrated evil that has a satanic fascist nature,” the religious leaders added in their April 6 statement.

The UCCRO has 16 members, including the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Latin-rite Catholic bishop of Kyiv-Zhytomyr.