From Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 515):
O you who hear prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.
When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.
Psalm 65:2-3
Last night’s initial reports were right. Russia did intentionally hit the historical center and residential quarters of Odesa. Our air-defense forces shot down 9 of 19 missiles.
They destroyed or damaged 44 buildings, 25 of which are architectural landmarks of the 19th-20th century. They killed one and injured 21 people, including four children.
Their main deliberate target was the UNESCO-protected Transfiguration Cathedral, one of the biggest and oldest in Odesa. Even before the actual attack, some sources reported that “Ukraine attacked its own temple with air-defense rockets.” Once again, it was posted before the actual missile strike, and it was written in such a broken Ukrainian that there was no room for doubt as to the sources and intentions of such “reports.” This Russian cynicism is beyond me.
We believe that everything that was destroyed can be restored. This Transfiguration Cathedral (with its name gaining a new meaning) was built in 1795-1808, destroyed by the Soviets in 1932, restored by Ukraine in 1999-2005, and destroyed by Russians in 2023. We believe we’ll see it in full glory in free and peaceful Ukraine.
Voice of Ukraine 
2 responses to “7/24/2023 – Odesa: “This Russian cynicism is beyond me…””
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
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J.R.R.Tolkien writes to his son, April 30 1944:
I do miss you so, and I find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours. The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.
I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives.
… But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do.
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