MOSCOW: Bone fragments from the sword hand of a medieval Russian prince who won a famous victory over the Mongols have been sent to the front in Ukraine to raise army morale in the Russian Orthodox Church’s latest show of support for President Vladimir Putin’s war.
The sarcophagus of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy, who died in 1389 and is revered by Russian nationalists for defeating the Mongol Golden Horde at the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo, was uncovered this summer during restoration work at Moscow’s Cathedral of the Archangel inside the Kremlin.
Putin personally inspected what experts said were the prince’s well-preserved remains in August, hailing them as “an absolutely unique and marvellous discovery” which reinforced the foundations of Russian history.
The Russian Orthodox Church, which has backed Putin throughout the conflict, said it had dispatched a fragment of Donskoy’s right hand to Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Putin said he had incorporated into Russia in 2022, a move Kyiv rejected as an illegal land grab.
Referring to Donskoy as “the holy commander,” the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church said part of his remains had been sent to the front to stand invisibly shoulder-to-shoulder with Russian troops.
“A fragment of the Grand Prince’s right hand – the very same right hand with which he wielded his sword on Kulikovo Field – has been sent to the front to strengthen the soldiers’ spirits,” it said in a statement.
The relic, held in a small ornate casket beneath toughened glass, will be shown to Russian combat units along the more than 1,000km front line, it said.
Donskoy, whose name was given to a Soviet tank column funded by the church in World War II, was declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988.
PATRIOTIC PUSH
The carefully choreographed effort to use his remains in a public relations exercise to boost patriotism and morale comes ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.
Russian military and church officials have presented the discovery as a fortuitous find that could help Russian forces prevail in Ukraine, now in the fifth year of a grinding war.
The tour also comes as Russian forces seek full control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and as diplomatic efforts to end the war have yet to yield a breakthrough.
Donskoy’s relics were carried through the streets of Moscow at the weekend in a huge Orthodox procession.
At a ceremony at a World War II memorial in Donetsk on Tuesday, Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy Kremlin chief of staff, joined military commanders and the Russian-installed regional head in kissing the relic and making the sign of the cross as a priest read a prayer.