‘I can’t pick up a gun’: a Ukrainian army chaplain on war, bandits and Russian ‘sadism’

Dmytro Povorotnyi is one of 160 priests who comfort Kyiv's soldiers. This weekend he's ready to bless more lost comrades as the counteroffensive intensifies

A hundred or more empty graves have been freshly dug into the vast scrubland that is Krasnopillya military cemetery, between the old Dnipro tyre factory and the E50 motorway on the southern perimeter of Ukraine's fourth largest city.

When the time comes, and it surely won't be long, Lt Dmytro Povorotnyi, chaplain at Dnipro military hospital, is likely to be leading the rolling verse of Orthodox prayers as the long lines of prepared holes are filled with flag-draped coffins.