The hollowness of Putin’s claims to be on some sort of God-given mission is exposed by his willingness to destroy the very churches he says he wants to be the pillars of a new, holy Ukraine. It has, he has said, embraced “godless” Western secularism and needs to be brought back into the “shared spiritual space” of Orthodox Christianity. His apparent Road to Damascus conversion – like St Paul, championing those he previously persecuted – appears to cloak a calculated justification for war with Ukraine. If we’re Christians, we should care about peace.”ĭespite the very public support given to the war by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russia’s Orthodox Church, as a young KGB officer in the last days of the old Soviet Union, Putin was part and parcel of its vicious oppression of all forms of organised religion. “I don’t know why Russian troops shoot at churches. “It’s horrible, it’s unhuman,” Father Sergiy Berezhnoy, an Orthodox priest in Kyiv, told the BBC of the devastation of Ukraine’s spiritual sites. Yet it is practising what you preach that marks the true Christian from the false prophet. Except that Putin misses no opportunity (as when taking a ritual dip, bare-chested, in Lake Seliger in the Volga Basin during celebrations of Orthodox Epiphany in January of 2018) to portray himself as a devout believer. In this context, his attack on churches, their custodians and those who seek shelter in them – including the shelling in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv of the 17th-century Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition, where civilians had sought sanctuary – should come as no surprise. The list of civilian targets shelled, mass graves uncovered and horrifying accounts of rape and murder committed by his troops grows by the day. But President Putin has shown little inclination so far, in what he describes as a “special military operation”, to respect such rules.
Under international law, the targeting of a country’s historical and cultural heritage, including its holy sites, is a war crime.
Next door, the administration building, where at Easter (celebrated a week later in Orthodoxy than Western Christianity) they would usually be baptising children, holding Sunday school and distributing festive cakes to the poor and needy, lies abandoned after shells ripped through its roof. Pictures have emerged of gaping holes blown in its red-brick walls, while the largest of its six domes is a shredded mass of steel. Putin has not spared its landmark Orthodox Cathedral of St Michael the Archangel, which sits right next to the Sea of Azov. The siege of Mariupol (named in the 18th century after the Virgin Mary) is thought to have killed up to 20,000 of its civilian inhabitants and reduced much of the port city to rubble.
Their stained-glass windows have been smashed, their holy icons scattered and, in one case, an Orthodox priest, Father Rostyslav Dudarenko, murdered – shot by Russian soldiers as he raised the cross above his head to confront tanks rolling into his village of Yasnohorodka, 25 miles west of Kyiv. In the month of March, almost 60 religious buildings, mostly Orthodox churches, some large, some small, some ancient, some new, have been damaged or destroyed by Vladimir Putin’s invading army. Over the past 1,000 years-plus of Christianity in the country, they have survived persecutions and even Stalin’s attempts in the 1930s to erase them completely – but this Easter they are firmly in the sights of another Russian leader. The onion domes of Orthodox churches are as much a feature of the Ukrainian skyline as steeples and spires are in the English countryside. Under international law, the targeting of holy sites is a war crime, but Putin has shown little inclination to respect such rules The destruction of Ukraine’s churches is a tragedy – but faith endures