I don’t claim to be a particularly religious person, but I try to have a healthy respect for any religious institutions or people that truly seem to serve a greater good. That’s part of the reason that I’ve found the shelling of religious buildings during the war particularly egregious. The multiple rocket GRAD (“Hail”) systems are wildly imprecise, so using them in populated areas is a war crime; by their nature, they’ll hit far too many non-military targets.

What if a place, the size of a small town, whose sole purpose was a religious institution got shelled? Not a military target, no military equipment in or around it, ever. That’s what happened more than once to the Lavra at Svyatogorsk, a monastery complex in the Donbas region. It’s a vacation/pilgrimage spot that Viktoria’s been to, and somewhere she wanted us to go during one of our future visits to Ukraine. By all accounts and pictures, a beautiful place devoted to peace.

Bombed, shelled, set on fire. More than once. The brothers and sisters who lived and worked there, injured and thankfully evacuated. Here’s what it looks like now: