Why the destruction of Ukraine’s churches matters

One small, deadly incident in the Ukrainian war proved memorable because it involved the ordinary things of life. A mother and two children trying to leave the town of Irpin on foot on 6 March died from Russian shelling. Their suitcases fell beside them and, miserably, a pet dog carrier. They lay on an ordinary road that could be in Surrey, on the steps of a memorial to Soviet dead from the second world war.

That spot is opposite a little row of bells under a tiled roof in the grounds of the Ukrainian Orthodox church of St George. A neat hoarding was visible in 2015 on the building next to the modest unfinished church, showing what it would look like when the five domes were roofed and gilded. Footage of the explosion that killed the family shows the completed domes gleaming in the sunshine, the building behind the hoarding still intact and the conifers in its garden not yet turned into spent matches.