Hundreds of Russians and Ukrainians alike crowded into the only Russian Orthodox Church on the Arabian Peninsula on Sunday to celebrate the most important Christian religious festival of the year — far from home and in the shadow of a war that has brought devastation to Ukraine and international isolation to Moscow.
The church’s gold Byzantine crosses rise unexpectedly from the dusty streets of Sharjah — a conservative Muslim emirate just south of skyscraper-studded Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
