U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal — one of Congress’s most dedicated supporters of aid to Ukraine — made a dramatic appearance at the St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church on George Street Saturday morning to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Fifty worshi ppers were in attendance for a moving service that included orisons that God grant “unto the just and God-fearing armies of the children of Ukraine great boldness and courage to advance and overtake them [the Russians] and to defeat them in Your Name.” After the service, as the 30 kids of the Ukrainian cultural school at the church filed in to hear him, Blumenthal made his upbeat remarks in what was an anxious atmosphere that was generally more prayerful than optimistic. “I want to dispel a false narrative that Russia is winning,” Blumenthal said during his brief visit. “They [the Russians] just expended 180,000 troops for a tiny town of Pokrovsk! Russia is not winning. Ukrainians are resolute and strong despite the hardships. Ukraine can win with the support of the United States but it needs ammunition, not applause, weapons, not words.” That hopeful if sober message was delivered Saturday by Blumenthal, who also reported that his tenth trip to Ukraine included an historic first visit by a U.S. Congressional delegation to Odessa. The special service at the church, called a moleben, was designated to mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the war when Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022. Despite Blumenthal’s appearance — he has made many visits to St. Michael’s, which is also a hub for sending large shipments of medical supplies to Ukraine — the mood of the local Ukrainian-Americans is somber, said Myron Melnyk, a leader of the community and the church, and not nearly as optimistic as the senator’s. Click here for a previous story on Blumenthal’s visit to St. Michael’s on the third anniversary of the war in 2025. And here for a story about the different mood that obtained at the one-year anniversary. Another assessment of current mood and conditions across Ukraine, also less sanguine than Blumenthal’s, appeared on Sunday in the New York Times by M. Gessen, a Russian-born columnist. Blumenthal said on Satutday that he returned from this trip, which also included U.S. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Jean Shaheen (New Hampshire), and Chris Coons (Delaware), more inspired and motivated than ever. That’s in no small part, he said, because his travels included witnessing both the hardships the Ukrainians are enduring this winter — brutal bombings of power plants that are leaving many buildings as cold inside as outside — as well as the courage and technical creativity, especially with drones, of the Ukrainian military. “Still I saw a country resolute and strong, absolutely determined,” he said. And those adjectives applied as well to President Zelensky with whom the senator also met. Blumenthal said he was returning to Congress in the coming days to try to advance pending bills for “more Tomahawk missiles, more F-16s, more replacements for the Patriot defense batteries, the whole array of equipment.” He also called for “sledgehammer sanctions” against those involved with the “shadow fleet” of tankers that enable purchases of Russian oil by India, Brazil, and China, among others, that keep Putin’s otherwise sputtering economy alive. And Blumenthal said the seizing of Russian foreign assets for uses like buying weapons for Ukraine and for post-war rebuilding should also be top priorities. The senator with local Ukrainian aid leader Myron Melnyk. “The problem is,” said Melnyk, “the bills aren’t going anywhere” in Congress. “They’re being held by [House Speaker Mike] Johnson, and [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune is just waiting for word from [U.S. President] Trump, which clearly is not forthcoming any time soon. “So, so far there’s no reason to be optimistic,” concluded Melnyk. “Actually we’re bracing for the worst: Can Europe do it on its own?” Blumenthal said part of the message he delivered was to assure Ukrainians the continued solid support of the American-Ukrainian community, and what he heard in response was also continued gratitude to the U.S. — not to its president but to the American people and to the Congress. “The problem,” Melnyk said, of the present moment, is that “Congress has no voice.” The post On War’s 4th Anniversary, Resolve Competes With High Anxiety At Ukrainian Church appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less