Ukraine’s wounded soldiers escape war at Putin’s favourite Greek mountain Putin has previously said he was proud to have sponsored projects on Athos.
In their four-day stay, part of a psychological support programme organised by Ukrainian authorities, the soldiers made a pilgrimage to some dozen monasteries on the slopes of Mount Athos, a spiritual centre since the 10th century.
The Ukrainian soldiers arrived in Greece with marks of war - one with a head scar, another with both legs amputated above the knee, some with invisible mental wounds from a three-year conflict that has ravaged their homeland.
A lot of them suffer from different illnesses, they are wounded, and we have to rehabilitate them,” said Father Mykhailo Pasirskyi, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest who accompanied the men on their trip.
By August 2024, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented nearly 12,000 civilians killed and more than 24,000 wounded in Ukraine.
