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

‘I’m always looking over my shoulder’: anxiety among Estonia’s Russians

Father Grigory Bozisov at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in Tallinn
Father Grigory Bozisov at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in Tallinn. Photograph: Hendrik Osula/The Guardian

Father Grigory Borisov offers a prayer for Ukraine every day in a special liturgy at the Lasnamäe church, a towering, whitewashed place of Russian Orthodox worship in the centre of the most populous suburb of Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, where a majority are Russian speakers.

The Church of the Icon of the Mother of God was built in 2013 with the help of funds from a Moscow-based NGO. While in March the Estonian Orthodox church joined other churches in the Baltic country in condemning the bombing of civilians in Ukraine, the church’s leader back in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, has been accused of providing theological cover for Vladimir Putin’s war.

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