An Interview with Fr. Ihor Maiak
Fr. Ihor Maiak hails from Kharkiv and is an Orthodox chaplain at the Northern District Military Medical Center, a military hospital in that city. As the Center is off limits to non-Ukrainian citizens, his October 2018 meeting with the editor of the East-West Church Report took place in its reception area. At that time the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) into which Fr. Ihor was ordained—an entity never recognized by the wider Orthodox world—had not yet been subsumed into the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople in January 2019. (For more on those developments, see the East-West Church Report, vol. 26, no. 4, 1-9, and vol. 27, no. 1, 1-9.)
The Northern District Military Medical Center cares for approximately 1,000 patients. Fr. Ihor first began visiting twice a week in 2016 and was formally appointed chaplain the following year. His interview with the East-West Church Report was punctuated by warm exchanges of Ukrainian greetings with frequent passers-by, suggesting that his presence at the hospital was much valued. The original conversation took place in Russian.
What led you to become a priest of the Kyiv Patriarchate?
As a person of faith, I just followed God. God brought me into the Kyiv Patriarchate. There are many priests here who transferred from the Moscow Patriarchate to the Kyiv Patriarchate—my friends who serve alongside me. But that did not happen to me. I came into the Kyiv Patriarchate when I was already an adult, a fully formed person. From the beginning, I had no prejudices against the Moscow Patriarchate, and I still have none. It is of no great significance where a priest serves. What is significant is if he is honest before God or not. It is significant if he has love, or if he has none. The Moscow Patriarchate is not necessarily a stigma. It is not better or worse. It is just that the Moscow Patriarchate serves Moscow, while the Kyiv Patriarchate serves Ukraine. But both Russia and Ukraine need to serve God. No, the questions I have are in another sphere. The thing is, there is a great deal of lying, of untruth, unfortunately. There is a great deal of state pressure [from Moscow] upon the Russian Church. In most cases, they do not do what they want, and that is not right for the Church. That is not honesty before God. If they had been honest from the beginning and said that they were the Russian Church on the territory of Ukraine, it would be one thing. But there is a lot of hypocrisy, where one thing is declared, but another is done. They say, “We are for peace, we are the Ukrainian Church.” But when people who died for Ukraine were commemorated in the Verkhovna Rada [national parliament], they did not stand to honor them. How can you not stand if you are the Ukrainian Church? God says that our deeds should not diverge from our words. [On 8 May 2015 senior clerics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)—including its leader, Metropolitan Onufry (Berezovsky)—remained seated in the Verkhovna Rada as then-President Petro Poroshenko read a roll of honor of Heroes of Ukraine. Metropolitan Onufry later explained that they had refused to stand not out of disrespect, but as an act of protest against the war in Donbass.]
Is this hospital exclusively for soldiers?
In principle, yes, although civilians can also arrange for treatment here privately. Soldiers are treated free of charge, as this is a military hospital. They are mostly in active service—for veterans there is a separate hospital.
Are those admitted here generally contract forces or volunteers?
Almost all are contract forces now, not volunteers. There are also conscripts, but those on the front lines are mostly contract forces, so they account for most of the wounded brought here. There are also trainees, the officer corps, and logistics personnel. It’s very varied, the whole army.
What is the soldiers’ attitude to faith in your experience?
We have a saying: “In the trenches there are no atheists.” These are people who have come face to face with death. In any event they start to think. “What next?” “What is death, anyway?” “What happens afterwards?” “What is this life for?” A person lived and lived and then ends up in war. If he has no faith, there is no place for him in war. For if a person lives and has only this life, what is the most precious thing? It is life itself, because there is nothing more than that. That means he must protect that life at all costs. It means not going to war; it means he should desert. Because if there is nothing more, why should he sacrifice the only thing he has? When a person ends up in war, he understands that life is very fragile and transient. It can be lost in a moment. If you don’t have faith in God, if you don’t have the knowledge that this is only something partial in the run-up to eternal life, then it is very difficult to fight—even to live, actually. Very many among the soldiers are therefore believers. Very many of these guys want to discover, to listen, and to pray—or at least to learn how to pray.
Plus, you understand, a hospital is not a place full of happy, healthy people. It is where people are mainly sick— moreover, here they are wounded. Many are amputees. A person who has had his arm or leg amputated is forced to think, “What next?” He was a young, healthy guy, and now he has had his leg removed—how is he to go on living? How will he deal with this? There are psychologists here, of course, but a psychologist works on a somewhat different plane. A psychologist only serves this body and this life. A priest leads a person further; he leads them by the hand to God.
A soldier is also someone who fights and kills. A normal person does not want to kill. For him, that is wrong. Generally speaking, it is unnatural. But when that is what is happening, a soldier wants to understand: “I have killed. What do I do with this next? How do I live with this? Did I do the right thing?” There are so many questions. These are just the main points.
The emergency room here gets filled with guys who urgently need to be operated upon. Helicopters fly the wounded to an aviation center, and then ambulances bring them here. I often start to talk to people when they have not even seen me yet. They are lying unconscious, and I am already praying. When God gives them strength, we start to speak, but spiritual care starts before they are even aware of it, when they are brought here lying unconscious. That’s how it is.
How has the Donbass conflict affected these soldiers’ attitude towards Russia, especially the younger ones who have no memory of being part of one state in the Soviet Union?
Well, there is nothing new in this world. You recall Cain and Abel. Who were they? Brothers. Cain did what? Killed his brother. Why? Because he was jealous. But they were brothers, so their relationship was probably brotherly before that. And so there are two peoples, Ukrainian and Russian. The majority of the Ukrainian people still speak Russian. What might their relationship be like? Fine. Brotherly. But when a brother comes and stabs you in the back instead of holding out his hand to assist you, how will you regard him, even if you loved him before that? At a minimum, you will re-examine your relationship. The same thing is happening now. People go to the front and see their “brothers” with weaponry pointing towards them and killing them. Ukrainians did not come onto Russian land and kill; Russians came onto Ukrainian land and are killing people they call brothers. It should not be that way, but that is how it is. Relations are therefore changing, and people who end up on the front line naturally cannot preserve their formerly positive attitude, if it existed. At a minimum, their attitude is one of wariness. At a maximum, unfortunately, it is the opposite of love.
