Church puts God before war

Lysychansk – The echoes of artillery fire made Deacon Sergiy question his allegiances as he descended into a candlelit basement to lead prayers at a war-damaged church on the east Ukrainian front.

The rattle was coming from a Ukrainian artillery gun positioned a few dozen metres from the clergyman’s house of worship in the battered city of Lysychansk.

The rounds of return fire that whistled in a few minutes later came from Russian forces trying to smother Lysychansk and its sister city Severodonetsk in the third month of their assault.

And the deacon helping out with the service in the church’s basement answered to the Moscow patriarchate – one of the branches making up the broader Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

This complex religious mix is particularly volatile in a largely Russian-speaking city at the forefront of Ukraine’s battle for survival as an independent state.

“I am a Russian. But I was born in Ukraine. So I do not really like any of this,” the deacon said of the shellfire that damaged his church’s dome and forced his prayer services underground.

Half a dozen elderly coal miners and farmers bowed and crossed themselves in a dank basement that once served as a Soviet-era storage facility before being incorporated into the church.