“I would invite all of you to pray especially for those who are leaving their homes today, because the increase in the intensity of hostilities causes a new wave of refugees and internally displaced persons in Ukraine,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said on July 18.

The prelate said that “the enemy launched a powerful rocket attack on the city of Mykolayiv at night; about ten rockets fell on the heads of peacefully sleeping people in this long-suffering city. The Dnipropetrovsk region and Zaporizhzhia came under missile strikes, our Kharkiv shuddered.”

“The Kharkiv region is also a territory of powerful combat clashes,” he added. “The border territories of Sumy and Chernihiv regions are shelled every day.”