Song and prayer filled the high-reaching nave of the Washington National Cathedral Sunday evening as almost 750 people gathered to commemorate the Ukrainians injured and killed in the 500 days since Russia’s full scale invasion.
The numbers are staggering. The United Nations estimates more than 9,000 Ukrainian citizens have been killed, more than 15,000 Ukrainian citizens have been wounded, and countless Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have died since the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
Despite this, Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., said the songs sung for the dead and suffering gave her hope.
“When English was together with Ukrainian going all the way up to the God’s ears — I don’t know — I felt home, I felt that we will win,” Markarova said.
Ryan Mulvey, a choir member of the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family, agreed.
“You feel it in your heart, in your bones, in your soul,” Mulvey said. “And it is sad, but we also take comfort … these people are with our Lord. There’s a hope there.”
Sunday was the first time he sung at the National Cathedral.
“It was a very powerful experience with the grand organ and all the singers here,” Mulvey said. “And to see the Cathedral packed to the full, to see so many people — many of whom are, I imagine, not Ukrainian but are here to show support for Ukraine — it’s a testament to the justice of the Ukrainian side in this war and how the world recognizes it as an active evil.”
Lydia Chopivsky Benson, a local D.C. resident and the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, said she, too, was inspired by the number of people who showed up.
“People do care and people do believe in what is right and that is not what is happening in Ukraine right now,” Benson said.
After the last song rang out, Markarova said she wouldn’t forget this commemoration.
“This is something I want to send back to Kyiv, and send back to Mariupol, and send back to Kharkiv — for all the people back home … we are not alone in this,” Markarova said.
