A reliquary containing part of the right hand of Dmitry Donskoy, the 14th-century prince revered in Russia for his victory over the Mongolian Golden Horde in 1380, has been taken to Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and is now being transported along the frontline

The Russian Orthodox church said in a statement: “The holy commander is going to where the fate of the fatherland is being decided today, so that he may invisibly take his place in the same battle ranks as our defenders.”

The relic was first brought on Tuesday to the Savur-Mohyla war memorial in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, where senior Orthodox clergy held a prayer service alongside representatives of the Russian military

The Russian-installed Metropolitan Vladimir of Donetsk and Mariupol said its presence would help soldiers and civilians “mobilise their strength” and secure victory over the enemy

The relic’s journey is the latest example of the Russian Orthodox church’s rabid embrace of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, which Patriarch Kirill, its leader, has repeatedly portrayed in religious terms[…]
Donskoy’s relics were first formally uncovered only last month during restoration work at the Cathedral of the Archangel inside the Kremlin, where generations of Russian princes and tsars are buried[…]
Critics have accused the church of breaking with religious protocol by opening Donskoy’s centuries-old tomb. The location of the prince’s burial had long been known, but the church had previously made no attempt to exhume his remains after he was canonised in 1988[…]
Zanemonets said the portrayal of Donskoy as a defender of the homeland fitted neatly with the Kremlin’s insistence that Russia was defending itself rather than conducting a war of aggression against its neighbour

Earlier this year, relics of Alexander Nevsky, another medieval prince and military hero revered by the Russian Orthodox church, were also sent to the front