At the cemetery near Kostroma the graves of war veterans were destroyed (PHOTOS)

As Tatyana Rutskaya from Kostroma told the correspondent of Novye Izvestia, several graves of the deceased at once, located in the cemetery near the Church of St.

“My grandfather, Nikolai Fedorovich Razgulyaev, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, is buried in this cemetery. My uncle, Mikhail Nikolayevich Razgulyaev, is buried nearby. Their graves are located not far from the temple building. On August 29, my sister visited the burial site and saw that the fence (common for two graves) had disappeared”, - Tatyana said.

The relatives of the deceased turned to the abbess of the monastery, but she said that she did not know who was destroying the burial places. And then strange things started happening. When the relatives turned to the police and the prosecutor's office with statements about the theft of the tombstones, the Interior Ministry officers went to the scene. However, they failed to get to the cemetery. On the gates of the monastery there was a castle and an announcement that from now on people were allowed to enter the cemetery only four days a week: from Thursday to Sunday, from 12 to 15 hours. No one answered the knock and calls of the police in the monastery.

“If the monastery is so strictly guarded, then how and who steals the fences?”, - asked the applicants.

When Tatyana wrote about what happened to her front-line grandfather in social networks, she received many responses from other victims. People said that they began to notice something was wrong at the cemetery at the end of 2019.

“From the grave of the front-line father Faina Zakharova, without the knowledge of relatives, not only the fence was demolished, but the monument itself! When she came to the cemetery, she saw that the grave of her classmate had been demolished altogether, it had simply been razed to the ground! And from the graves of many fellow villagers, fences disappeared”, - eyewitnesses complained.

“I can't imagine how it was possible to destroy the graves of war veterans in the year of the 75th anniversary of Victory! Without the knowledge of the abbess, no one can even enter the territory, not to mention bulldozing the graves. Therefore, all these excuses that the arrival allegedly had nothing to do with it look very doubtful. And this disgrace happens without any notification of the relatives who care for the graves”, - the Kostroma residents were outraged.

When the vexed relatives of the deceased wrote an appeal to the Kostroma diocese, they received an answer signed by the secretary of the Kostroma diocesan administration, Archpriest Valery Bunteyev.

“The territory of the cemetery that you are writing about belongs to the Makariyevo-Pisemsky convent, which sets the time for visiting the cemetery. As for the disappearance of the fences, according to Abbess Nina, the fences interfere with the cleaning of the cemetery, including the areas of abandoned graves. Due to the lack of communication, the fences were removed without the knowledge of the relatives of the buried”, - wrote Valery Bunteyev.

On what grounds some of the graves were completely demolished along with the tombstones, the diocese did not answer.

“I will protect my grandfather, as he used to protect me. We must go to court. So far I have written to the regional prosecutor's office (waiting for an answer), to the regional Investigative Committee, to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, to lawyers and to the media. I am convinced that the extrajudicial demolition of graves, which were looked after by relatives, is a gross violation of the law on burial and funeral business. And the problem here is not so much the cost of restoring monuments and fences. This is a moral aspect, a question of preserving human memory and family history”, - said Tatyana Rutskaya.

A few days ago, two teenagers were caught near Kostroma, who knocked down gravestones in a cemetery in the village of Krasnoe-on-Volga. The children and their parents were promised by the police to prosecute and recover the full value of all damaged tombstones from those responsible.

The inhabitants of the region are convinced that in the Buisk region, in contrast to the Krasnoselsky, the destruction of graves, including veteran ones, occurs not because of the invasion of juvenile vandals, but on direct instructions from the church authorities. However, for some unknown reason, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are not punished for what is happening in the cemetery. There is a policy of double standards.

The regional prosecutor's office has not yet received a response to the official appeals of relatives who have lost their ancestral graves.