Cyrillic church songs

I can't distinguish between spoken Ukrainian and Russian, but I can tell the difference when they're written. Ukrainian uses these letters { і ї є ґ } which don't appear in Russian, while Russian uses letters { ё ъ ы э } which don't appear in Ukrainian.

As I was trying to keep up with this one song this past Sunday (and failing miserably), I noticed something -- the Russian word меня ("me"). Ukrainian word is мене. And I realized -- hey, this song's not Ukrainian.

It's *Russian*.
To me, this is remarkable. Ukraine is undergoing a wave of linguistic patriotism right now, with many otherwise perfectly bilingual people avoiding the use of Russian.

And yet here we have a group of Ukrainian refugees, from Kiev -- arguably the most "Ukrainian" part of Ukraine, if that makes sense -- forced from their homeland because of Russia, singing a song in *Russian.* They even used the Russian pronunciation for the word Господь ("Lord"), using the "g" sound at the beginning rather than "h." (This explains the difference between "Luhansk" and "Lugansk.")

There is sadness among the Ukrainians I know -- wives separated from their husbands; children who've left schoolmates behind. There is anger, too, I am sure -- anger at the injustice of it all.

But there doesn't seem to be hate. Or at least, it doesn't seem to manifest itself this way, despite all the reasons I could completely understand.

I find that very convicting.