The President visited the Church of the Resurrection and the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in the Butovo memorial site. Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Aleksei II conducted the liturgy.
After the service Vladimir Putin and Aleksei II laid flowers on the giant wooden cross.
The former shooting range of the NKVD [Stalin's secret police] is a place where mass shootings and executions occurred in the name of political repression. Between August 1937 and October 1938 20,765 people were shot here. So far about a thousand members of the Russian Orthodox clergy, 230 of who are saints, have been identified.
In 2004 the Church of the Resurrection and the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia started to be built in the Butovo shooting range. The construction of the Church was completed in spring 2007. Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Aleksei II and Metropolitan Laurus, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, attended the Church's inauguration ceremony.