Russian president Vladimir Putin has often cast himself as the defender of the Orthodox faith, and he even allowed the church ...
And it is now backing the creation of a new unified Orthodox Church based in Kiev. Getty Images Mt Athos monastery ... which it controlled before the Russian empire expanded.
Built a few years before the revolution, it has a history that reflects the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th century. Its walls remember the First World War and two revolutions ...