Faithful try to keep flame of flattened Ukraine city alive

Vovchansk's copper-domed basilica was always packed at feasts like Easter, with worshippers overflowing out into the Ukrainian city's central square.

But Father Igor Klymenko's displaced congregation -- forced from their homes by a Russian onslaught that has pounded their border city to dust -- was reduced to just nine on the autumn morning AFP caught up with them in the nearest big city, Kharkiv.

"The strongest people, truly the strongest, stayed" in Vovchansk, said the bear-like bearded cleric. "They are there behind me," he added, gesturing to the few women in headscarves and white-haired men, heads bowed in prayer behind him.

"And they too left after May 10," when Russia launched a military assault of rare ferocity even for the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

Ninety percent of central Vovchansk has been razed, according to the city's mayor -- worse even than the destruction of the "meat grinder" that was Bakhmut -- and the shelling is still going on.

Even so in June, the orange-bricked mass of the Myrrh Bearers Church still stood stubbornly intact amid the devastated centre of the city, where 20,000 people once lived.

No longer. Little more than a few charred walls are visible in satellite imagery this month analysed by Bellingcat, the open-source investigative collective that has been working alongside AFP to see what has happened to the city.

Ever since Father Igor was made parish priest in October 2022 when Vovchansk -- which is only five kilometres (three miles) from the Russian border -- was briefly retaken by Ukraine, he has lost count of the number of his flock who have perished.

The first was Olga, "killed by shrapnel in our vegetable patch on a Sunday."

It was on October 8, 2023. "She had gone to fetch carrots to bring them back to the church, when shrapnel sliced into her."

Father Igor -- a cheery man with a striking resemblance to the famously humble Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov -- is not originally from Vovchansk.

He was parish priest in the neighbouring village of Rubizhne, where he also ran a farm.

"I had a horse, two bulls, two sows, 12 piglets and hens. We had to abandon Rubizhne on May 22 when it was our turn to be bombarded. We left everything behind. All I was able to take were the holy books and objects from the church," he said.

Father Igor is 55, "but everyone thinks I'm 70", he laughed.

He gave his last sermon in Vovchansk on May 5. He was to return as usual the following Sunday, "but on the night of Thursday May 9 to May 10, everything began.

"Raisa (one of his parishioners) messaged me in the middle of the night. 'Father, pray for us, because here it is hell,'" she told him.