![]() “This is why we need the chaplaincy in the army to support our soldiers.” “Personnel have a high morale because they understand what they are fighting for, they are fighting for their land. “Counter-attack isn’t something that happens suddenly, they need to work on that,” he said. He added that with help from military chaplains, soldiers’ morale is high and they are “more open with the chaplains than their commanders”.Īnd he is “358 per cent” confident that Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia will go well. “If you have situations where you don’t see any chance and options, chaplains give hope to move on.” They have passed six weeks of training in the UK and now just want to improve their skills here. “Chaplains are from different departments like the navy, the infantry, special forces and medical department as well. “It’s important to have a good quality of training,” he added. “We need more than 700 chaplains, at the moment we have more than 100 chaplains in position but it’s still not enough,” he said. Many more are needed though to give proper support to soldiers facing the horrors of war, said Colonel Vitalii Skrybets, head of the Military Chaplaincy Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukraine’s army already has 160 chaplains who have joined the military’s command structure from April 2023, having previously worked as embedded civilians rather than officers. “I wanted to do something for their future,” he said. ![]() Like Lt Povorotnyi, Lt Kotsyuba has left his family in their hometown near Lviv to support Ukrainian soldiers in the war against Russia. “It’s true that I’m a priest and can’t carry a weapon, but I can be with the soldiers who couldn’t accept the idea of Russian occupation and decided that they had to be a part of that war.” “The main aim of chaplaincy, it’s not to make a person come back to God, it’s to help them find a way to God. “There is a saying that there is no atheism in war,” he said. Lieutenant Taras Kotsyuba, who has also been a military chaplain since 2014, explained why religion is so important to Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines. It’s not just about the weapons and rockets, it’s about spiritual support.” “The main aim of chaplaincy is to give a spiritual umbrella to the personnel who are fighting for us. “But even those men and women who are fighting, they also need some protection. Our men and women are so strong because they protect Ukraine from the enemies that are so cruel, that came to Ukraine to kill and rape a lot of people. “We have the understanding that the umbrella that covers Ukraine, it’s our armed forces. “Once when Russia bombed Dnipro, my granddaughter who is four years old put her toys under the stairs and covered them with an umbrella,” said Lt Povorotnyi, who decided to become a military chaplain after the occupation of Crimea in 2014. Lieutenant Dmytro Povorotnyi, a priest from Dnipro in central Ukraine, was one of the officers who took part. The participants learned how to deliver pastoral care, spiritual support and moral guidance to soldiers on the battlefield. The two-week programme run by the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD) saw an initial group of 10 Ukrainians train at a camp near Warminster in Wiltshire. Ukrainian military chaplains completed training with the British Army before heading back to the war-ravaged country to give front-line troops a “spiritual umbrella”.
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