Reports and widespread international calls for a resolution to this particularly egregious violation of the human dignity of Ukrainians (who had been reduced to eating grass in Oleshky by the blockade) contributed to opening up possibilities for at least a temporary solution. Last month, on the day after his lung surgery, Pope Leo XIV telephoned Vladimir Putin from his hospital bed to implore a regional temporary ceasefire to permit assistance for the victims. A few days later, the Pope met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking the Ukrainians to agree to a ceasefire and do everything possible to facilitate the necessary emergency resolution. Meanwhile, Melania Trump reportedly helped broker negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian humanitarian assistance groups that eventually worked together under mutually agreed conditions to save the remaining population of Oleshky.
Thank God! These people are alive! In the midst of this war (or any war), any victory for life, health, and human dignity is a blessing. Obviously, it doesn’t mean the war is anywhere nearer to being over. Russia’s illegal invasion and occupation continues, and there is no way to predict what may happen before anything resembling a just and lasting peace might come about. War is horrible. So often, it’s true that the longer it lasts, the more complicated and intractable it becomes. The resulting scars on human beings, their ongoing history, and the earth they inhabit are so difficult to heal.
But the relief for the civilians of Oleshky is real. It may also represent a sign of larger possibilities that we cannot yet imagine, that can be born of necessary, difficult, persistent, and honest dialogue. This dialogue must continue to take place whenever and wherever possible among those who are truly willing to meet together to facilitate any degree of peace that focuses on the dignity of human persons afflicted by violence.
Dialogue is more than “meetings” or attempting to make “deals” through “talks” in which one or both parties are insincere, guileful, and manipulative. Dialogue seeks to put the human person at the center, the human person created in the image of God. It is God who gives peace, who leads His children to remember that they are brothers and sisters of one another.
