MOSCOW. June 16 (Interfax) - An archpriest from the Luhansk Diocese, Maksim Volynets, and his family have moved from Ukraine to the Moscow region.
"We did not want to leave until the last moment, thinking it will pass somehow but seeing what happened in the village of Makarovo near Luhansk, where my family had been renting a house, we realized that we did the right thing, otherwise we would have been destroyed," Father Maksim told Interfax on Monday.
The infrastructure of Makarovo - a gas pipe, electricity, and a water main - was completely destroyed a few nights ago, he said. Many residential buildings have been damaged, looting is rampant, he said.
He said that currently he lives together with his five daughters, wife and mother-in-law at the house of a priest in the village of Zharovonka, Odintsovo district, Moscow region, who had invited him and offered shelter. Father Maksim's relocation was blessed by the Archbishop Mitrofan of Luhansk and Alchevsk.
"I could not go to Kyiv, even though I have parents there. But there is virtually no communication between us now, because we do not hear one another, or rather, they do not hear us. They tell us their version of events, even though we saw everything with our own eyes: airplanes hovering above our heads and dropping bombs," the priest said.
Other clergymen who left Ukraine earlier included the Secretary of the Odesa Diocese Archpriest Andrei Novikov who has been appointed as the head of the Church of Life-Giving Trinity at Vorobyovy Gory in Moscow; the head of the Odesa Diocese's Department for Religious Education, Catechesis and Missionary Work, Archpriest Oleg Mokryak; and the well-known Kyiv archpriest Andrei Tkachyov.