Ukrainian priest wounded in Russian missile attack

By Svitlana Dukhovych

Fr. Ihor Makar was in his car, on the way to celebrate the liturgy for the feast of Theophany (Baptism of Jesus) and perform the traditional blessing of the waters, when he was wounded by a Russian drone strike.

The incident happened near Zelenivka, which is itself near Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine.

Fr. Makar, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and director of Caritas in Kherson, was with seminarians from Drohobych Seminary (in western Ukraine) on 6 January, when they noticed a Russian drone on the road.

"We were driving behind one of our parishioners," the priest said, "and I noticed a drone in the sky. Because of the frost, the road was very slippery, and we could neither stop nor turn back... I realised that this drone was probably targeting us."

The explosion caused by the strike shattered the car windows, piercing the doors and wheels. Fortunately, the seminarians were not injured, while the priest will have to undergo surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel lodged in his leg.

Priestly vocation

Fr. Makar has been serving in the Kherson region since 2005.

His first parish was in Antonivka, which straddles the banks of the Dnipro river and thus now finds itself on the frontline of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The Eastern-Rite Catholic priest lived there with his wife and their four children until the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion.

During the Russian occupation of Kherson, which lasted until 11 November 2022, the parish priest, who was with his family in Ternopil in western Ukraine, helped his parishioners and the needy who remained under occupation from a distance, sending medicine and food for a soup kitchen.

Since Kherson returned under Ukrainian control, Fr. Makar has continued to serve in the region's two parishes and help the population in a region where attacks are carried out every day.

"Living here is really dangerous," Fr. Makar told Vatican News last July, "but people continue to live here, and my vocation as a priest is to be with them."

Russian attacks at Christmas

Also in Kherson, on the day on which some Orthodox were celebrating Christmas Eve, Catholics of the Byzantine rite were marking Theophany, and those of the Latin rite the feast of the Epiphany, when the Russian army attacked a bus in the Shumensky district.

An employee of the municipal environmental department was killed, and eight people sustained injuries.

In the village of Shyroka Balka, in the Kherson region, the Russians launched explosives from a drone, killing a 48-year-old man who was standing in the street.

Throughout the Christmas period, Russia carried out attacks on Ukrainian towns and villages.

On Christmas Eve and in the early hours of 25 December, Russia launched a massive attack: in total, more than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones. The main target was the country's energy sector, but the attacks caused civilian deaths and injuries.

According to a report from the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, published on 31 December, between September and November 2024, 574 civilians were killed in the country as a result of the war and 3082 injured.