Led by Cardinal Mykola Bychok CSsR, several hundred people commemorated the sombre fourth anniversary of the devastating Russian invasion of Ukraine in the forecourt of St Mary’s Cathedral on 24 February.
Cardinal Bychok, who lives in Melbourne, is the Eparch of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Australia and Oceania.
In four years, Ukraine has suffered an estimated 500,000 military casualties, Russia possibly as many as 1.2 million. More than 5 million Ukrainians have fled the country. About 15,000 Ukrainian civilians have died, including about 780 children. Much of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
And the war shows no sign of stopping.
Amidst all these horrors in the heart of 21st century Europe, Cardinal Bychok singled out one – the deportation of Ukrainian children.
“Thousands of our sons and daughters – some as young as infants – have been taken from their homes, separated from their families, transported deep into Russia, and subjected to forced assimilation,” he told the crowd. “This is not only a violation of international law; it is a violation of the most sacred bond God has created – the bond between parent and child.”
This war crime has been well documented. Yale Medical School estimates that more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia.
President Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the masterminds of this policy.
The Ukrainian government maintains a website listing the names of 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been abducted. The United State Senate recently held a hearing at which witnesses claimed that Ukrainian children have been re-registered, made citizens of Russia, indoctrinated, and pressured to reject their families and their country. Even if they do return, they could be deeply traumatised.
European media have even reported that authorities in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region created an online “catalogue” of Ukrainian children for adoption. Prospective parents can filter the children for age, gender, eye colour, and even character traits like “obedient” or “calm”.
“These children are not statistics,” insisted Cardinal Bychok. “They are living souls. They have names, stories, dreams. They belong to families who wait every day for news, who pray every night for a miracle, who refuse to surrender hope. And we stand with them. We raise our voices for them. We will not allow the world to forget them.”
The president of the Ukrainian Council of NSW, Andrew Mencinsky, told The Catholic Weekly that Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children was “barbaric.”
But even children who are safe with their families are suffering, he said. For four years they have known only war.
“They’re living in bunkers, being woken in the middle of the night because there’s massive shelling of residential areas having to go underground. Schools are now held underground or online, which has terribly impacted the level of education in Ukraine.
Children need to be together to learn,” he said. “Remember how people complained about having to do distance learning during COVID? Well, imagine distance learning while missiles are falling on your head.”
Mencinsky said that the Ukrainian community was both exhausted and absolutely determined to continue to fight. When the war began, he used to tell people: “You don’t understand the Ukrainian mindset. They had Russia trying to destroy them for hundreds of years, and they resisted every time. They’ll resist again.”
Pope Leo XIV recently lamented the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. “Peace cannot be postponed,” he said. “I renew my heartfelt appeal: let the weapons fall silent, let the bombings cease, let an immediate ceasefire be reached, and let dialogue be strengthened to pave the way toward peace.”
However, the Australian media has succumbed to crisis fatigue. Coverage of the fourth anniversary has been minimal. Mencinsky said that one prominent politician had told him that no one in Parliament House wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I’ve got to help Ukraine.” He hopes that publicising the fate of those 20,000 children will help change that.
