• The Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lypivka sheltered nearly 100 residents during the 2022 Russian occupation.
• The church, with a history spanning more than 300 years, halted construction during the 2022 invasion but has since resumed.
• The majority of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians, with the Lypivka church affiliated with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago, it also provided physical refuge from the horrors outside.

Almost 100 residents sheltered in a basement chapel at the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary while Russian troops occupied the village in March 2022 as they closed in on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, 40 miles to the east.

“The fighting was right here,” the Rev. Hennadii Kharkivskyi said. He pointed to the churchyard, where a memorial stone commemorates six Ukrainian soldiers killed in the battle for Lypivka.

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“They were injured and then the Russians came and shot each one, finished them off,” he said.

The two-week Russian occupation left the village shattered and the church itself — a modern replacement for an older structure — damaged while still under construction. It’s one of 129 war-damaged Ukrainian religious sites recorded by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization.

“It’s solid concrete,” the priest said. “But it was pierced easily” by Russian shells, which blasted holes in the church and left a wall inside pockmarked with shrapnel scars. At the bottom of the basement staircase, a black scorch mark shows where a grenade was lobbed down.

But within weeks, workers were starting to repair the damage and work to finish the solid building topped by red domes that towers over the village, with its scarred and damaged buildings, blooming fruit trees and fields that the Russians left littered with land mines.

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For many of those involved — including a tenacious priest, a wealthy philanthropist, a famous artist and a team of craftspeople — rebuilding this church plays a part in Ukraine’s struggle for culture, identity and its very existence. The building, a striking fusion of the ancient and the modern, reflects a country determined to express its soul even in wartime.

The building’s austere exterior masks a blaze of color inside. The vibrant red, blue, orange and gold panels decorating walls and ceiling are the work of Anatoliy Kryvolap, an artist whose bold, modernist images of saints and angels make this church unique in Ukraine.

The 77-year-old Kryvolap, whose abstract paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction, said that he wanted to eschew the severe-looking icons he’d seen in many Orthodox churches.

“It seems to me that going to church to meet God should be a celebration,” he said.

There has been a church on this site for more than 300 years. An earlier building was destroyed by shelling during World War II. The small wooden church that replaced it was put to more workaday uses in Soviet times, when religion was suppressed.

Kharkivskyi reopened the parish in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and set about rebuilding the church, spiritually and physically, with funding from Bohdan Batrukh, a Ukrainian film producer and distributor.

Work stopped when Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Moscow’s forces reached the fringes of Kyiv before being driven back. Lypivka was liberated by the start of April.

Since then, fighting has been concentrated in the east and south of Ukraine, though aerial attacks with rockets, missiles and drones are a constant threat across the country.

By May 2022, workers had resumed work on the church. It has been slow going. Millions of Ukrainians fled the country when war erupted, including builders and craftspeople. Hundreds of thousands of others have joined the military.

Inside the church, a tower of wooden scaffolding climbs up to the dome, where a red and gold image of Christ raises a hand in blessing

For now, services take place in the smaller basement, where the priest, in white and gold robes, recently conducted a service for a couple of dozen parishioners as the smell of incense wafted through the candlelit room.

He is expecting a large crowd for Easter, which falls on Sunday. Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate Easter later than Catholic and Protestant churches, because they use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day that marks Christ’s resurrection.

A majority of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians, though the church is divided. Many belong to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with which the Lypivka church is affiliated. The rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church was loyal to the patriarch in Moscow until splitting from Russia after the 2022 invasion and is viewed with suspicion by many Ukrainians.

Kharkivskyi says the size of his congregation has remained stable even though the population of the village has shrunk dramatically since the war began. In tough times, he says, people turn to religion.

“Like people say: ‘Air raid alert — go see God,’” the priest said wryly.

Liudmyla Havryliuk, who has a summer home in Lypivka, found herself drawn back to the village and its church even before the fighting stopped. When Russia invaded, she drove to Poland with her daughters, then 16 and 18 years old. But within weeks she came back to the village she loves, still besieged by the Russians.

The family hunkered down in their home, cooking on firewood, drawing water from a well, sometimes under Russian fire. Havryliuk said that when they saw Russian helicopters, they held hands and prayed.

“Not prayer in strict order, like in the book,” she said. “It was from my heart, from my soul, about what should we do? How can I save myself and especially my daughters?”

She goes to Lypivka’s church regularly, saying it’s a “place you can shelter mentally, within yourself.”

As Ukraine marks its third Easter at war, the church is nearing completion. Only a few of Kryvolap’s interior panels remain to be installed. He said that the shell holes will be left unrepaired as a reminder to future generations.

“(It’s) so that they will know what kind of ‘brothers’ we have, that these are just fascists,” he said, referring to the Russians.

“We are Orthodox, just like them, but destroying churches is something inhumane.”

The British authorities have begun a series of operations to detain migrants in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda as part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship immigration policy.

The UK Home Office, which oversees immigration matters in the United Kingdom, released a video on Wednesday showing armed immigration officers handcuffing individuals at their homes and escorting them into deportation vans.

In a statement, it announced a “series of nationwide operations” ahead of the first deportations to begin in the next nine to 11 weeks. Interior minister James Cleverly said enforcement teams were “working at pace to swiftly detain those who have no right to be here so we can get flights off the ground”.

BREAKING: The first people set to be removed to Rwanda have been detained. pic.twitter.com/2WWNhQVC1l

— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) May 1, 2024

Last month, Parliament approved a controversial law – known as the Safety of Rwanda Bill – that allows for asylum seekers who arrive illegally in Britain to be deported to Rwanda, even after the UK Supreme Court declared the policy unlawful last year.

Sunak, who is expected to call an election later this year, said the flagship immigration policy seeks to deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats and to tackle the issue of people-smuggling gangs.

Unions and human rights charities have expressed dismay at the wave of arrests so far. While some have succeeded in blocking transfers to removal centres, they say it is becoming increasingly difficult to bring legal action.

Who is being targeted by the campaign of mass arrests?

The Home Office has announced it is carrying out arrests within an initial cohort of about 5,700 men and women who arrived in the UK without prior permission between January 2022 and June 2023. Those who fall within this group have been sent a “notice of intent” stating that they are being considered for deportation to Rwanda.

However, it was revealed this week that government data shows that the Home Office has lost contact with thousands of potential deportees, with only 2,143 “located for detention” so far. More than 3,500 are unaccounted for, with some thought to have fled across the Northern Irish border into Ireland. Others include people who have failed to attend mandatory appointments with the UK authorities. Ministers have insisted enforcement teams will find them.

Several asylum seekers who did attend compulsory appointments with the UK authorities as part of their application for asylum this week have been arrested and told they will be sent to Rwanda.

Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the charity Migrants’ Rights Network, told Al Jazeera that “people are forced to go and report in these Home Office centres and once they are there, there is no guarantee that they’ll come out free”.

The government has not provided exact figures for the number of arrests conducted since the operation started on Monday, but detentions have been reported across the UK in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and in cities including Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow.

Maddie Harris, founder of the UK-based Humans for Rights Network, told Al Jazeera that asylum seekers from war-torn countries including Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria and Eritrea with no connection to Rwanda are being arrested as part of the scheme.

One of the organisation’s clients, a young woman who has been in the UK for almost two years, was arrested as part of the crackdown. “She is absolutely terrified,” Harris said, adding that while the young woman has no connection to Rwanda, she was told she would be deported to the Eastern African country.

According to Humans for Rights Network, individuals who have filled out a Home Office questionnaire over the past two years were also being arrested. The organisation said it had initially believed completing the form indicated that the client had been admitted into the UK asylum system and could not be deported.

That assumption has been proven false and “that’s very concerning”, Harris said.

How is the arrest campaign affecting the people being targeted?

Rights groups, including Migrants’ Rights Network, have been successful in blocking the transfer of some people to removal centres in several cases, but Qureshi said it required “24/7 resistance” for each individual case.

Qureshi added that the arrests have had a chilling effect, pushing asylum seekers to evade authorities and into exploitative situations. “Raids push people underground and away from support systems,” she said. “There is no safe option for people and that has been made clear.”

Natasha Tsangarides, associate director of advocacy at Freedom from Torture, said detentions run the risk of rekindling pre-existing trauma in people who were subject to torture or ill-treatment, while also driving them away from support systems.

“Clinicians who work with torture survivors every day in our therapy rooms have recognised that many will experience re-traumatisation even with a very short time in detention,” Tsangarides said, adding that this would deteriorate trauma symptoms.

“Not only does this legislation place people at risk of harm if they are sent to Rwanda, but it spreads such terror in the community that we worry people may go underground to avoid taking any risk.”

The UK government has not ruled out sending survivors of torture to Rwanda.

Could legal action stop the deportations?

The ruling Conservative party’s plan to deport immigrants who have entered the UK without permission to Rwanda has faced more than two years of legal hurdles and political wrangling between the two houses of Parliament.

In June 2022, the first flight taking refugees to Rwanda was stopped at the last minute by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Last year, the UK Supreme Court declared the deportation scheme unlawful on the basis that the government could not guarantee the safety of migrants once they had arrived in Rwanda.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill, which was passed on April 23, circumvented the Supreme Court ruling by designating the East African country as a safe destination, paving the way for deportations to begin.

The Illegal Migration Act, which became law in July 2023, also stated that anyone who arrives in the UK on small boats will be prevented from claiming asylum, detained and then deported either back to their homelands or to a third country, such as Rwanda.

Jonathan Featonby, chief policy analyst at Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera that both legislations severely limit the ability of people to challenge their removal to Rwanda through the courts.

Under the plan, asylum seekers arriving illegally in the UK can be sent to Rwanda to be processed within the East African country’s legal system and will not be able to return to the UK.

“In reality, people’s ability to continue that challenge and get the support they need to go through that process is severely limited,” Featonby said. “There are some legal organisations coming together to make sure they can provide legal support and challenge both individual cases and the legislation itself, but it is quite unclear how successful those challenges will be.”

The senior civil servants’ union FDA on Wednesday submitted an application for a judicial review against the government’s Rwanda plan, arguing that it leaves its members at risk of breaching international law if they follow a minister’s demands.

Featonby said appeals can also be filed at the European Court of Human Rights, “but that will take time and it will likely not prevent someone from being removed to Rwanda in the meantime”.

“Not only is the legislation dehumanising people coming to the UK to seek protection, but it is shutting down the asylum process,” he added.

“We are calling for the whole plan and the Illegal Migration Act to be scrapped and for the government to run a fair, efficient and humane asylum system.”

On 2 May in Kyiv, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron pledged £3 billion ($3.75 billion) in annual military assistance for Ukraine for “as long as is necessary,” saying the UK has no objections to the weapons it provided being used within Russia, according to Reuters. Update: the story is withdrawn.

In an interview with Reuters in Kyiv, Cameron noted that some of the British equipment “is actually arriving in Ukraine today, while I’m here,” also noting:

“We will give three billion pounds every year for as long as is necessary. We’ve just really emptied all we can in terms of giving equipment,” the British Foreign Secretary said.