Alarm over pro-Russian monasteries

As war kicked off in Ukraine, soldiers at a military airstrip in the west of the country went hunting for the origin of a laser pointer they feared was marking out targets on their base.

- Emma Graham Harrison

They found it in a nearby church. Behind the thick walls of the building in Kolomyia, run by monks loyal to Moscow, they also discovered a stockpile of food and alcohol, and three guns.

“It’s very, very surprising, because it was a monastery,” said Father Mykhailo Arsenich, the army chaplain to the unit that searched the church. “There was a big stockpile of food, packed for military use, designed to keep 60 to 65 people for a very long time.

“We found two pistols, and one hunting rifle, which was converted from a combat Kalashnikov. They couldn’t address the question of why priests needed guns.”