As the war in Ukraine against Russia continues, Ukrainians still took the time to celebrate and observe Orthodox Easter.
However, even the holy holiday wasn’t enough to keep Russian forces from dropping bombs on the besieged nation.
Despite the resurrection, Russia bombarded a Ukrainian city with missiles over the weekend, but the faithful turned to a local church in droves with hopes of a better tomorrow.
“I always pray for Ukraine, for our children,” Anya Sloviansk, 73, a resident of Sloviansk said. “I ask for peace as soon as possible to live a little bit longer without war. We don’t want to die.”
Sloviansk and others have brought bags and baskets of food to be blessed.
More people have attended church during the recent troubled times than before the war started.
But not everyone could make the services because emergency crews are trying to find people under rubble.
This was the deadliest strike on Sloviansk since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
An S-300 missile gouged out the top floors of this apartment block killing, among others, a little boy.
“The child who died was only two years old,” Tatyana Sloviansk, said. “His father is still there. If only they could lift those slabs, they could rescue him.”
That family, like many others, fled Slovyansk early in the war but came back after the Russians retreated last autumn.
Officials say around 30,000 residents have returned in recent months.
Pope Francis said he’s thinking about everyone in Ukraine and Russia, who celebrated Easter this weekend and once again encouraged peace between the two nations.