Russia is planning to build one of the tallest Orthodox cathedrals in the world, dedicated to its military.
The cathedral is to be built in Patriot Park, a military theme park near Moscow, according to RT.com – and Russians have begun likening it either to a castle from the hit HBO series Game of Thrones or to a Buk missile system.
Russia's defence minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday: 'I would like us to make it a people's cathedral and the main cathedral for the Russian armed forces', adding that it was to be finished by the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in 2020.
The cathedral will be 95 metres high at its apex, just short of St Isaac's Cathedral in St Petersburg at 101 metres and the Transfiguration Cathedral in Khabarovsk at 96 metres.
The new cathedral's website says: ' The main temple of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is being built to unite all Orthodox believers' and will 'symbolize the spirituality of the Russian army raising the sword only to protect its Motherland'.
Four side chapels will be dedicated patrons of each wing of the armed forces – St Elijah for the air force, St Andrew for the navy, St Alexander Nevsky for the army and St Barbara the Great Martyr for the strategic missile forces.
The cathedral complex will also feature a multimedia exhibition and museum with interactive historical reconstructions of famous battles.
The building is another indication of the extraordinary turnaround in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church since President Vladimir Putin came to power. Thousands of new churches and monasteries have been built and the Church is again at the heart of the Russian establishment.
In the communist period clergy and believers were harassed and persecuted. Between 1917 and 1935, 95,000 Orthodox priests were executed. While persecution was intermittent in subsequent decades, the apparatus of the state was used to discourage religion.
