Russian attacks have killed about 120 members of the clergy in Ukraine and damaged or destroyed around 800 religious buildings since the full-scale invasion began, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Speaking in an interview with the US programme This Week on Capitol Hill, Mr Zelensky said the clergy had been killed deliberately in targeted strikes rather than by accident, and that some of the damaged sites were a thousand years old. He was responding to American commentators, including Tucker Carlson, who have accused Kyiv of persecuting religious minorities, and said religious groups in Ukraine were free and worked together through a national council of churches.
On the same day in Istanbul, Mr Zelensky met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to discuss the humanitarian operation in occupied Oleshky and wider peace efforts.
Source: Kyiv Independent
