Russian troops on the front lines in eastern Ukraine are receiving unusual support as they prepare for another winter. It is the remains of a warrior prince who fought for Moscow more than six centuries ago.
Fragments of the remains of Prince Dmitry Donskoy, whose victory at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 was celebrated in Russia, were sent to the front in early September and are now being sent to various military bases in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
The military wing of the Moscow Patriarchate, the clerical leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, said the “holy commander” would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Russian soldiers invisibly. The church added that the relic, a fragment of his right hand, is the same hand with which he wielded the sword at Kulikovo.
It may seem strange to send religious relics into battle, but ever since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has tried to use every means possible in what has become a grueling and bloody war of attrition, including the use of religious symbolism to portray its cause as “just” and divinely approved. As a result, relations between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church have become closer than ever.
“The church has become virtually indistinguishable from the state,” said Sergey Chapnin, a religious scholar and director of public relations at Fordham University’s Center for Orthodox Studies.
“From my point of view, (access) has reached its limit.”
Sending holy relics to troops is a long-standing practice in Orthodox Christianity.
“This combination of the sacred and the material is attracting attention,” said Chapnin, who previously worked at the publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate. “Of course, this will be used for propaganda.”
Experts say Donskoy’s body also carries a modern message.
“He himself was not an invader, but a defender of the Motherland,” the academic told CNN. From the government’s point of view, it is “very important to show that Russia is not an aggressor and that we are defending our territory.”
Chapnin called it the “mobilization myth.”
“These myths that connect different times and eras can have a very powerful effect on the public consciousness,” he said, adding that the relics are presented as “magical relics.”
Patriarch Vladimir, the head of the Russian-installed Orthodox Church in Donetsk and Mariupol, said the relics would help soldiers and civilians “mobilize both mental and physical strength” and “win victory over the enemy.”
Donskoy was not the first warrior saint that Russia summoned during the war in Ukraine. The relics of Prince Alexander Nevsky, another medieval ruler turned symbol of Russian military glory, were also delivered to the army earlier this year.
The timing of sending Donskoy’s remains to the battlefield was also perfect. The prince’s remains were discovered during restoration work at the Kremlin’s Archangel Cathedral in August, weeks after unconfirmed reports that the Nevsky relics were lost.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the recovery of the remains, whose whereabouts were known from the time of burial, “totally unique” and a “wonderful discovery.” Patriarch Kirill, leader of the pro-Kremlin Russian Orthodox Church, described it as “a special sign of God’s providence.”
But Reverend Alexander Zanemonets, a Moscow-born Orthodox priest and historian who lived abroad for years before permanently leaving Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, said the discovery “has nothing to do with Christianity.”
“This is definitely an exploitation of Christianity and an exploitation of the church for ‘patriotic’ purposes.” He said that in churches with relatively few active worshipers but strong state support, incentives tend to align with the state, and said the use of remains was “a cynical calculation.”
From 2022 to 2024, Mr. Zanemonets served Ukrainian war refugees in the Finnish Orthodox Church. His service ended amid lingering questions about his Ukrainian language skills and ties to Russia, but he denied the allegations in a Facebook post.
As ironic as it may seem to some, many of those on the front lines have found themselves turning to God.
“We don’t all talk to God when things are going well, but we all talk to God when things are bad,” one former Russian military officer who previously fought in Ukraine told CNN.
He described makeshift churches built using whatever was available, soldiers praying before each mission, and priests regularly visiting military units and hospitals.
“There should be priests everywhere, like in open-air kitchens,” he said, citing a common Russian expression: “We are Russians. God is with us.”
A Russian soldier currently serving in the Zaporizhzhia region also described the opportunity to talk to priests, pray and touch holy objects as “serious spiritual support.”
The military says tensions are rising as the war enters its fifth year with no end in sight. “The overall situation is tense and will only get worse as time goes on,” a Russian military commander in Donbas told CNN.
The soldiers spoke about their faith at the front on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Away from the front lines, the religious reach of the Russian Orthodox Church appears to be much more limited than its demonstrated political influence. A 2026 telephone survey by state pollster VСIOM found that about two-thirds of Russians identified themselves as Orthodox Christians, down from about 80% 15 years ago.
But only about 2% of baptized Orthodox Christians in Russia practice their faith regularly, several priests and religious scholars told CNN, a figure backed up by Russian Interior Ministry data on Orthodox Christmas service attendance.
But annual religious processions held by far-right and nationalist groups in four Russian cities drew large crowds in September, with more than 100,000 people attending in Moscow alone, according to official figures. In the capital, worshipers carried fragments of Donskoy’s relics through the streets in a procession led by Kirill.
Zanemonets, who now works for the Orthodox Church in America, said such events primarily serve to demonstrate to the nation how the church can “organize large numbers of people.”
Still, religious scholar and historian Konstantin Mikhailov called the turnout in the country of more than 145 million people “a drop in the ocean” and argued that Russian society remained deeply secular, against the wishes of the state and church.
Mikhailov argued that while the church receives funding and political support from the Kremlin to expand its influence, the Kremlin gains legitimacy by supporting state claims, calling this a cycle of “mutually reinforcing.”
The historian also said that this cycle encouraged the growth of military chaplains at the front. But for critics within the church, this raises difficult questions about what kind of help priests should provide to soldiers.
“We need to support people, including those in military uniform,” said the Rev. Grigory Mikhnov Vaitenko, a Russian priest with the Apostolic Orthodox Church, which helps Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war. “But the question is how do we support them?”
“On the one hand, we must not deny people spiritual help, and on the other hand, we must not lead them into illusions,” the priest told CNN.
The Russian Orthodox Church takes a different view. Days after President Putin announced partial mobilization in September 2022, Patriarch Kirill told worshipers that soldiers who died in the line of duty had made a sacrifice that would “wash away all sins.”
Ukraine has been actively seeking to secede from the Russian Orthodox Church, and formally separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 2019. Bartholomew I of Constantinople, head of the World Orthodox Church, recognized the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Mikhnov-Vaitenko pointed out that in both Russia and Ukraine, Orthodox Christians make up the majority of the population. The priest, who left the Russian Orthodox Church after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, said the church as an institution “blesses children to kill each other.”
Chapnin, of Fordham University, said this is a departure from the way martyrdom has been understood in the Orthodox tradition for thousands of years. “In relation to the task of state propaganda, the Gospel has a subordinate importance,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the front lines, not all soldiers CNN spoke to saw the artifacts as meaningful aid. One military officer in the occupied Donbas region of eastern Ukraine called it “a very unconventional solution to our problems in the 21st century.”
“My view is that the mothers of those who died in this military operation need them more,” he added.
