Across Europe, Ukrainian exiles pray for peace back home
ABC News
Across Europe, Ukrainians have gathered for church services to pray for peace in their war-torn country
BERLIN -- Alona Fartukhova has been coming to Berlin’s Ukrainian Orthodox Christian community every day since she arrived in Germany five days ago from war-torn Kyiv. The 20-year-old refugee has been attending daily prayers for peace and helped organize donations for her compatriots back home.
On Sunday, Fartukhova joined dozens of other Ukrainian worshippers at a red brick stone church in the German capital who sang together, lit candles, and received blessings from the head of the community, Father Oleh Polianko. Later they put medical crutches, sleeping bags, diapers, big boxes of gummi bears and countless jars of pickles — which were piling up everywhere inside the church — into big cardboard boxes to be send to Ukraine.
“It’s some help for our army, and it is ... a lot of things for children” said the university student, who fled by herself and is now living at a hotel in Berlin, as she stacked boxes onto the church pews. "It is so good that a lot of people support us, we really appreciate it.”
Across Europe, Ukrainians gathered for church services on Sunday to pray for peace in their war-torn country. Newly arrived refugees mingled with long-time members of Europe's 1.5 million-strong Ukrainian diaspora at houses of worship all over the continent from Germany to Romania to Moldova.
