World
War-scarred village in Ukraine finds solace in vibrant new church
- 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.
Christian Orthodox worshippers leave the chapel basement after attending a service at the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, on April 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
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.”
Patrick Muldoon, an actor who starred in “Days of Our Lives” and “Melrose Place,” died on Sunday, his manager confirmed to Variety. He was 57.
From 1992 to 1995, Muldoon originated the role of Austin Reed on the daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” He returned to the soap to reprise the role from 2011 to 2012.
He also had a recurring role as Jeffrey Hunter in the teen television series “Saved by the Bell” in 1991. Muldoon also starred on the primetime soap opera “Melrose Place” from 1995 to 1996, playing the villain Richard Hart.
In 1997, Muldoon played the role of Zander Barcalow in the film “Starship Troopers,” directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Muldoon was also an active producer, working on a slew of movies including “The Tribes of Palos Verdes,” “Arkansas,” “Marlowe,” “The Card Counter,” “The Dreadful” and “Riff Raff” through his Storyboard Productions. He was set to produce the upcoming feature “Kockroach,” starring Chris Hemsworth. Just two days ago, Muldoon posted on Instagram: “So excited to be a part of this amazing project KOCKROACH directed by Matt Ross starring Chris Hemsworth, Taron Edgerton, Zazzie Beetz and Alec Baldwin.” The production is currently filming in Australia.
His latest acting role was in “Dirty Hands,” a new crime thriller with Denise Richards and Michael Beach. The film is slated to be released later this month.
Muldoon is survived by his partner, Miriam Rothbart; parents Deanna and Patrick Muldoon, Sr.; sister and brother-in-law Shana and Ahmet Zappa, niece Halo and nephew Arrow Zappa.
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A strong earthquake took place off the northern coast of Japan Monday afternoon, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency to put out a tsunami alert in the area.
The quake, registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.5, occurred off the coast of Sanriku in northern Japan at around 4:53 p.m. local time, at a depth of about 6 miles below the sea surface, the agency said.
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A television screen shows a news report on Japan Meteorological Agency’s tsunami warning, saying it expected tsunami waves of up to 3 meters (9.84 feet) to reach large coastal areas in northern Japan after an earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan, in Tokyo, Japan April 20, 2026 (REUTERS/Issei Kato)
A tsunami of around 2.6 feet was identified at the Kuji port in the Iwate prefecture while a tsunami of 1.3 feet was recorded at a different port in the prefecture, the agency indicated.
The Iwate prefecture put out non-binding evacuation advisories for those living in 11 towns.
A tsunami of as high as 10 feet could strike the region, the agency indicated.
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A policeman picks his way through the debris looking for bodies in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, on March 22, 2011, after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (TORU YAMANAKA/AFP via Getty Images)
A powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 wreaked havoc in Japan, leaving over 22,000 dead and compelling nearly 500,000 people to flee their homes, most of them because of tsunami damage.
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In this satellite view, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power plant after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 14, 2011 in Futaba, Japan. (DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images)
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Around 160,000 fled their residences due to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant — around 26,000 have not come back because they resettled somewhere else, their hometowns are still off-limits, or they harbor concerns regarding radiation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Bulgaria’s former President Rumen Radev, an EU critic who has called for renewing ties with Russia, hailed a “victory of hope” on Monday after his Progressive Bulgaria (PB) coalition topped the polls in Sunday’s election, the eighth such parliamentary vote in five years.
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Many voters see Radev, a former fighter pilot, as the only person capable of giving the corruption-plagued Balkan nation a fresh start.
The 62-year-old has presented himself as a defender of the lowest earners in the EU’s poorest country as he walks a tightrope on European issues.
He has hailed the benefits Bulgaria has reaped from EU membership while calling for dialogue with Russia as its full-scale invasion of Ukraine rages into a fifth year.
“Bulgaria is in a unique position, because we are the only EU member state that is both Slavic and Eastern Orthodox,” Radev, who was president for nine years, said recently.
“That should be used … and we really can be a very important link in this whole process, which I am sure will sooner or later begin, to restore relations with Russia,” he added.
Last year, as president, he called for a referendum on Bulgaria’s entry into the eurozone, saying the Balkan country was not ready to join. Yet his proposal failed and Sofia adopted the joint European currency on 1 January.
Radev has also slammed military aid to Ukraine and the EU, trying to turn its back on Russian oil and gas.
“Geographically, economically, in terms of resources and as a market, we need to rebuild those relations,” he insisted.
Raised fist
For sociologist Parvan Simeonov, Radev is hard to figure out, like many leaders in the region who, “depending on the visiting delegation, choose whether or not to fly the Ukrainian flag in the background.”
Radev insists he embodies distrust of the country’s elites and oligarchs, denying any links to them.
A graduate of the elite US Air War College, he later served as the head of the Bulgarian Air Force.
He entered politics in 2016 and later won a presidential election to the largely ceremonial post.
Born in 1963 in the southeastern town of Dimitrovgrad, the austere and reserved man lacks the polish of seasoned communicators.
When he vows to regulate public tenders through AI or to reform the much‑criticised judicial system, he sometimes gives the impression of reciting a memorised text.
Yet he won over some liberal pro-European voters when he openly supported protesters at anti-corruption rallies in 2020.
Radev walked out of the presidential palace with his fist raised to join the protests that ultimately toppled conservative Prime Minister Boyko Borissov a year later.
Radev was re‑elected head of state in 2021 with two-thirds of the vote.
Modest lifestyle
Late last year, Radev once again backed anti-corruption protesters, and when the last government resigned in December, he stepped down as president to run in the election.
Radev’s left-wing conservative movement, Progressive Bulgaria, brings together a plethora of figures including military officers, former socialist officials and athletes, and the union leader of the country’s main arms manufacturer, which has boomed from supplying Ukraine’s army.
Radev is campaigning to combat social inequalities and promote budgetary discipline without calling for radical change, said Simeonov.
His promises of a return to stability appeal to voters tired of facing election after election.
Married with two children and intensely patriotic, Radev also wooed voters with a modest lifestyle and his defence of what he calls family values.
A campaign video shot in a village shop that went viral showed Radev soothing the grocer, upset over rising prices and Bulgaria’s entry into the eurozone.
Political instability
Sunday’s election follows five years of near-permanent crisis in which no government has survived a full term.
Instead, the country has cycled through caretaker administrations, fragile coalitions and short-lived alliances that have often collapsed amid scandal.
Public trust has all but evaporated. Voter turnout, once a barometer of democratic engagement, has entered a state of chronic decline.
This prolonged instability has unfolded against a backdrop of deepening internal divisions and mounting external pressure.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exposed a stark fault line running through both society and the political class, one that continues to define the national conversation.
And yet, paradoxically, Bulgaria has, in this same period, taken major steps forward in its European integration — joining Schengen and adopting the euro — often without a functioning government or even a passed state budget.
Meanwhile, delays in reforms have slowed access to EU recovery funds, raising the risk of losing billions.
More than 60% of the votes had been counted by Monday morning, according to the Central Electoral Commission, putting Radev’s PB in the lead with around 45%, an absolute majority of at least 132 seats in the 240-seat parliament.
The outcome of the election is set to not only shape Bulgaria’s domestic trajectory but will also be closely watched across the EU, as the bloc fears further instability in any of its member states.
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