Moscow concern over Ukraine
Moscow Friends ask Quakers worldwide to pray and work with them for peace in Ukraine
Moscow Monthly Meeting have asked Quakers worldwide to pray and work with them for peace in Ukraine. Friends in Moscow recently met to discuss the situation in Ukraine, and Russian involvement, and invited Mikhail Roshchin and Johan Maurer to prepare a statement on the basis of four principles that had been agreed upon.
Johan Maurer said: ‘Different Friends had different assessments of the causes and desirable outcomes’.
Moscow Friends proposed that the following principles guide their prayers and advocacy:
- For government based on compassion instead of coercion, free from international interference.
- For reconciliation among all the people of Ukraine regardless of ethnicity.
- For all the different ethnic groups of Ukraine to be able to express their hopes and expectations freely.
- For all controversies to be resolved without violence.
‘It is not, technically, a minute,’ Johan Maurer explained. However, he added: ‘Despite the dramatic differences in opinion, there were clear convergences of principle and, in the end, we agreed that those convergences could form the basis of a statement “to all Friends”.’
