‘We don’t want people to know’: Moscow-aligned Easter service in Kyiv

Worshipers at Trapezniy Church, part of the sprawling Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv. Photograph: Ed Ram/The Guardian

As Ukraine celebrated the high point of the Orthodox year, the capital’s Pechersk Lavra – a monastery complex that has allegiance to the Moscow Patriarch – held an Easter service under unusually strained circumstances.

Normally, streets across Ukraine on the night before Easter Sunday would be dotted with Orthodox believers walking to church. Easter services in the Orthodox world start the night before and end at dawn on Sunday – to symbolise Jesus rising from the dead.