Putin & Martyrs

From Ecumenical News International:

Russia's Putin honours Stalin’s victims at Moscow killing field
ENI-07-0845

By Sophia Kishkovsky
Moscow, 31 October (ENI)--President Vladimir Putin has attended a memorial service conducted by Patriarch Aleksei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, at a church built near a Soviet police secret killing field, where at least 20 000 people were executed at the peak of dictator Joseph Stalin's bloody purges.

The visit to the site, known as "Butovsky poligon", or "shooting range, on 30 October was for Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB secret security services, his first. The newly built Church of the Resurrection and the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia honours the 355 "new martyrs" who the Russian Orthodox Church has so far canonised after they were executed at Butovsky poligon.

About 1000 people are known to have died for their Orthodox faith at the shooting range. The church on the site was consecrated in May 2007 as part of ceremonies marking the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. The latter is an émigré group that for decades called for proper acknowledgement of the new martyrs.