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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Daniel Boffey in Dnipro

‘I can’t pick up a gun’: a Ukrainian army chaplain on war, bandits and Russian ‘sadism’

Army chaplain Lt Dmytro Povorotnyi stands amid the graves of Ukrainian soldiers in a military cemetery at Dnipro
Army chaplain Lt Dmytro Povorotnyi stands amid the graves of Ukrainian soldiers in a military cemetery at Dnipro Photograph: Ed Ram/The Observer

A hundred or more empty graves have been freshly dug into the vast scrubland that is Krasnopillya military cemetery, between the old Dnipro tyre factory and the E50 motorway on the southern perimeter of Ukraine’s fourth largest city.

When the time comes, and it surely won’t be long, Lt Dmytro Povorotnyi, chaplain at Dnipro military hospital, is likely to be leading the rolling verse of Orthodox prayers as the long lines of prepared holes are filled with flag-draped coffins.

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