Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and President Katerina Sakellaropoulou expressed Greece's thoughts for the citizens of Ukraine over Orthodox Easter.
"On these Holy Days of Orthodox Easter, our prayers are with the citizens of Ukraine and, more than ever, the people trapped in Mariupol," Mitsotakis said in a tweet he posted in English on Holy Thursday.
"In accordance with international law and common humanity, they must be given safe passage out of the besieged city," he urged, with mind of the 120,000 Greeks that live in Mariupol and its surrounding villages.
On these Holy Days of Orthodox Easter, our prayers are with the citizens of Ukraine and, more than ever, the people trapped in Mariupol. In accordance with international law and common humanity, they must be given safe passage out of the besieged city.
— Prime Minister GR (@PrimeministerGR) April 21, 2022
For her part, Sakellaropoulou described the war as unjust and unprovoked war in an message on Facebook.
"Every Good Friday, our tradition says, the sky weeps. Nature participates in the anguish of the Divine Passion, creation mourns," she wrote.
"And every Christian experiences, at the height of the Divine Drama, the introspection and their own spiritual and personal reference to grief, even if at the end of this course there is the dim glow of the life-giving Resurrection.
"This year, however, the unjust and unprovoked war raging so close to us gives greater intensity to our mourning. The indomitable Ukrainian people carry their own cross and fight heroically for all of us, for the high ideals that make up and hold together our societies, giving meaning to our individual and collective life.
"Within the joy and sadness of the Week of Passions arises the experience of fighting courage, the deep conviction and our faith in the final triumph of good," Sakellaropoulou said, ending with a quote from the poet Dionysios Solomos and noting that all look to this "bright light of peace and hope".
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