Faith & Miracles on Russia-Ukraine Front Line - 6 Weeks with Christian Soldiers
A miracle happened: the icon of St. George began to smell fragrant and flow with myrrh. And this was not the only miracle we encountered along the way
Boris Korchevnikov, general director of the Spas television station, went with a Spas film crew on an Orthodox Christian religious procession, which took place along the entire line of combat contact through several front-line and border regions. The procession lasted a month and a half. The famous TV presenter shared his thoughts and told the Russian Gazette about the amazing things that happened during this dangerous journey.
A Journey of Faith through Seven Regions of Military Conflict
Boris, how did the idea of an Orthodox Christian cross-procession along the front line come about?
Boris Korchevnikov:
I remember when they gave me a gift of a particle of the relics of the holy warrior St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, revered in the church along with St. George the Victorious. At that moment, the thought fell on my heart - I don’t know why - that the holy warrior had come to me so that we would go there together, to the front line.
Since Spas film crews regularly travel and work there, I thought that we could walk along the entire front line and look at the military on the first and second lines of defense. After receiving a blessing from Patriarch Kirill, we simply went - starting from the Kherson region. Father Igor Fomin, rector of the Alexander Nevsky Church at MGIMO, went with us on the journey. The priest took with him an icon of St. Alexander Nevsky with a particle of his relics, donated by Fyodor Emelianenko.
Already there, in Novorossiya, when we had just entered the Northern Military District zone, some soldiers from Orthodox Christian battalions gave us a small icon of St. George the Victorious with a particle of his relics. And then some incredible things began, because it was very difficult to organize this - both on the church and military lines.
Like you, I am a journalist, not an organizer of religious processions. I think that the holy warriors themselves helped us, and we found ourselves in absolutely amazing places that we had not planned to be in.
Boris Korchevnikov went to the Northern Military District zone and met with Orthodox Christian priests who bless the soldiers with holy water, serve the liturgy, and help meet their spiritual needs.
What was your journey like?
We went through the Kherson, Zaporozhye, DPR, LPR, Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk regions. If we had traveled in a straight line, it would have been two and a half thousand kilometers. Of course, along the way we stopped at many different places, from regional capitals to forest dugouts dug into the ground. The total travel time was one and a half months. We drove cars, but sometimes we had to abandon them on the highways, and then we were driven through impassable forest belts in KAMAZ trucks or armored personnel carriers. And at the unit locations, we, together with the soldiers, had prayer services in front of icons and relics.
Where did you spend the night while you were on the road?
Always somewhere different. Very often - in the same locations as our soldiers. This was a completely new experience for me - sleeping in a dugout on wooden beds, practically shoulder to shoulder with each other. You know, this is very difficult both in everyday life and psychologically. After the first few hours of sleep, my whole body began to ache, my nose was stuffy — and the soldiers have to stay in those conditions for months. I felt more acutely that, in addition to the severity of battles and the constant risk, military life itself was very difficult.
Underground Churches
Have you witnessed any notable events taking place at the front?
Along the entire line of contact, something was constantly rumbling next to us. Of course, we didn’t see the battles themselves, because we walked a little further away. But I will say this. Almost immediately after our religious procession, Krynki fell in the Kherson region, and the liberation of Rabotino began in the Zaporozhye region. Two days after the prayer service in the Donetsk Cathedral, where all the clergy met us, Avdeevka was taken. We were already on the territory of the LPR at that time - and at that very time a miracle happened: the icon of St. George the Victorious with a particle of his relics began to smell fragrant and flow with myrrh. And this was not the only miracle we encountered along the way.
VIDEO: Russian troops liberate Avdeevka. — Authors: TASS / Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation / Social networks
How did our soldiers react to the holy items you brought with you?
I didn’t realize just how important and necessary it would be for them. It even meant a lot to people who were otherwise far from the church and the faith. The main thing that I understood in these churches crowded with soldiers was that the faces of saints were in front of me. Amazing grace is there with people who make such a self-sacrifice for us, for the sake of Russia. You feel it very acutely there.
What is the most powerful impression you've had in the last month and a half?
Probably the underground churches in dugouts on the front lines. When we first found ourselves in such an underground church near Krynki, dug deep into the ground, I had the feeling that here was both Mount Athos and Jerusalem at the same time: the relics of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica that we had brought were fragrant there. It was such a strong aroma - I still remember this smell, you can’t confuse it with anything else.
Who setup this church in a dugout?
The regiment commander is a hero of Russia who has been participating in the special operation from day one. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say his first and last name. He fought in a variety of directions and built churches wherever he was. The next thing that completely shocked me was that in this underground church, the priest serves the Divine Liturgy every night. The commander stands every night at the service and takes communion, along with any of his subordinates who desire to participate.
When does he sleep?
I talked to him about that. This is a man made of different stuff — it’s difficult for us to imagine. For the third year now, he has been sleeing only three to four hours a day.
In a period of two months, 117 soldiers were baptized in this church. This was the first underground church that we visited, and I was surprised to see that there are a lot of similar churches along the entire front line. And they are installed by the military themselves, on their own initiative. In the direction of Belgorod, I even saw the consecration of one such newly built church. In general, during the time that we walked in the religious procession, Father Igor baptized 20 people. Usually the guys came up and asked him to baptize them after the prayer service.
You visited different cities and towns. Is there a difference between the sentiments in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and in the DPR and LPR?
It’s an interesting thing. Let's take for example Genichesk - this is the current temporary capital of the Kherson region and Berdyansk in the Zaporozhye region. These are our new regions, which were recently in another country, and many people live there. We were warned that this is not Donbass, which had long become part of the Russian world, that people here have lived for decades under the pressure of Ukrainian propaganda, and that we need to be careful with them. So imagine, first in Genichesk, and then in Berdyansk, seeing our religious procession, local residents ran up to us - hugged us, kissed us, thanked us, and said, “We will survive all the difficulties, just to be with Russia. Don’t leave us!” And this is not propaganda; these are real people. These are our people — Russian people. And when we arrived in Berdyansk, a new school was opened there - an Orthodox school, and the first students were already going there. Can you imagine? War is raging not far away, but here people are building a peaceful life. Nearby on the front line there is still a battle with darkness, but here light is already being sown.
Did you have a chance to communicate with the local clergy? What are their moods?
Of course, these are generally the greatest patriots of Russia, and they remained so in the darkest times of Ukraine. Many of them suffered from the SBU for their views. After all, it was the clergy of the new territories, on their own initiative, who went to Moscow to receive a reception from Patriarch Kirill with a request to accept them under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarchate, which was done.
Refugee assistance centers were created at the surviving churches; they helped thousands of people. The same Orthodox school in Berdyansk opened precisely on the initiative of the local clergy. One of these priests burning-in-spirit in the Zaporozhye region told me that his confessor from the Pochaev Lavra told him back in the 90s: “If this church ever tries to break away from the Moscow Patriarchate, take off your pectoral cross and leave such a church.”
Imagine, in the Donbass for all 30 years of independence there was not a single schismatic church, while throughout Ukraine there was a violent seizure of UOC churches. They didn't let them in. When the false Patriarch Filaret was going to come to Donetsk, the Donetsk elder Zosima (Sokur) said to his spiritual children, “We will welcome him with eggs and tomatoes.” That’s what was done - Filaret then left the Donbass and never appeared again. And, of course, the devil is now taking revenge on this land.
Now at the state level it is proposed to create psychological assistance centers for veterans of the Northern Military District. Does military action upset you?
You know, I spoke on this topic with the soldiers themselves - in several battalions that bear the names of Orthodox saints. Will there be a so-called Donbass syndrome, like there was in Chechnya or Afghanistan? And in what they said, I heard the answer to the question - what needs to be done so that such a syndrome will not exist. Yes, war can make you embittered if you don’t know God during it. But if you know Him, if you find Him there in your heart, then on the contrary you become real, reliable, knowing what is good and what is bad. As the commander who built the dugout church near Krynki told me, “you remain an unbeliever only until the first artillery shelling.”
Miracles on the Front Line
You said that you have repeatedly encountered miracles. Tell us more.
So much has happened that it’s not even possible to remember it all. This old prayer book was given to me by a soldier who carried it in his breast pocket near his heart. A bullet flew into him and ricocheted, but the soldier didn’t have a scratch. The rector of the Donetsk Church of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers was saved from a shell explosion by the sculpture of the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II, which took all the fragments upon itself - Father Victor was only wounded in the arm.
A soldier told the following story. In the direction of Soledar, next to each other there are two units of one hundred people each. In one of them, the commander is a believer; he invites priests and introduces his soldiers to the faith. For a long time, there was not a single fatality in his unit, only some wounded. But in a location nearby there is a completely different spirit, without prayer, and in the everyday and disciplinary sense there is no order. They have suffered a large number of fatalities. This is the truth of life.
And it is not priests or political instructors who decide to name their battalion after this or that saint, but the soldiers themselves. It is they who raise the banner with the face of the Savior above their unit — The Image Not Made by Hands.
You see, in my office hangs a flag with the image of three holy warriors - St. Alexander Peresvet, St. Alexander Nevsky, and Alexander Suvorov. The commander who gave me this flag told me that HIMARS rockets flew to the location of his unit. The only survivors in the building were those fighters in whose room this flag hung. Someone may say, “it was a coincidence,” but this is the space for faith that the Lord always leaves when performing a miracle.
Did you feel support from Russia during the procession?
During these one and a half months, several dozen of our reports were broadcast, which were watched by millions of viewers, so we can say that all of Russia took part in this procession with us. I know that in many dioceses the ruling bishops gave their blessing to read akathists in churches and serve prayers to the holy warriors St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, St. George the Victorious, and St. Alexander Nevsky during our religious procession - this was the case, for example, throughout Crimea. We called on the audience to intense prayer on these days - because we are convinced that nothing can be stronger than this prayer - when the front and rear pray together.
On this trip you met completely different people. How do residents of Donbass and Novorossiya see their future?
The birth of children speaks better than words about how confidently they see the future. On the streets of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as at a temporary accommodation center in the Rostov region, I saw a lot of pregnant women. This, of course, does not indicate the better material well-being of the residents of Donbass compared to the residents of Central Russia; on the contrary, people there lived for 10 years in a war zone, with water and electricity for three hours a day. But the fact that they continue to have children speaks of their strong spiritual health.
Oddly enough, the residents of Donbass, under terrible pressure, were able to retain in themselves what the residents of “big” Russia had largely lost: the ability to be Russian and to appreciate this gift of belonging to a huge nation-civilization. And today, largely thanks to the people of Novorossiya, we are regaining this skill. Both the front and the people living near it are now transforming all of Russia. Of all the miracles that happen so abundantly on the front lines, the transformation of our country is the greatest miracle and hope.
Source: rg.ru (Russian)
While reading this my heart surged with love for my new home. As much as these soldiers are fighting the physical battle, another one rages in heaven. I'm so thankful that I live in a country that puts God first. I do have a question, how can we help? What can we do to support our soldiers? Hearing that many of soldiers are turning their lives to Christ truly burdened my soul.
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