‘We are afraid, but we are also strong’: Stunned sisters worldwide watch as Russia invades Ukraine
HAMBURG, GERMANY — Sisters in Ukraine, supported by women religious elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, report anxiety and fear but also resolve as Russian military forces invaded their country on Feb. 24.
Sr. Anna Andrusiv of the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great told Global Sisters Report in a Feb. 24 email from Lviv, a historical city in western Ukraine that borders Poland and is home to the congregation’s main convent in the country, that residents are stocking up on gasoline, cash from banks and medical supplies from local pharmacies.
Though fighting had not yet been reported in Lviv by afternoon Feb. 24, people were frightened, she said, adding that there have been some military incursions in western Ukraine, “but our soldiers are fighting back.”
“It looks like the Russian aggressor wants to misinform us about what is going on in Ukraine,” she added.
In the midst of such uncertainty, she and others are trying to remain calm. “We are praying,” Andrusiv said.
One point of relief for Andrusiv is that a group of sisters who joined her and other religious on a peace pilgrimage to eastern Ukraine earlier in the week returned safely to the convent in Lviv, where 27 Basilian sisters live, on Feb. 24. The Feb. 22-23 pilgrimage by the religious of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was to the city of Zaporizhia, which is only about 120 miles from the occupied area of Donetsk.
Immediately after the group of religious left eastern Ukraine, “Russia began to bomb us. Can you imagine it?” Andrusiv wrote. (more)