#CIS #Russia #Kursk – A 19th-century wooden Orthodox church standing about a mile from the Ukrainian border was destroyed in September 2026, Russian regional and church authorities said. They blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike that leveled St. George’s Church in the village of Kozino, in Kursk Oblast’s Rylsky District.
Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein announced that the church had been added as the 83rd entry in the region’s “White Book,” a registry of cultural-heritage sites that Russian officials said were damaged or destroyed during fighting along the border. The wooden Church of St. George the Victorious, built in 1844, stood in Kozino, a small settlement immediately adjacent to Ukraine’s Sumy region.
The Kursk Diocese said it learned on Sept. 17 that the building had been destroyed to its foundations. Diocesan accounts stated that an earlier strike on June 16, 2026, damaged the church but left it standing; a later attack finished the structure. Officials reported no casualties.
Khinshtein said the parish had a longer history than the standing building. The first written mention of a church on the site dated to 1648, he said. The community rebuilt after raids and later Soviet-era closures. In 1936 authorities converted the church into a grain store, though services continued at times; believers regained the building in 1944. The governor called the latest destruction an attempt to erase “memory, roots and identity.”
Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik echoed that language, describing the loss as part of what he called Kiev’s war on the history and faith of Russians’ ancestors. The Moscow Patriarchate’s website carried the diocese’s report the same week.
Kozino sits in a strip of countryside that has been under intermittent fire since Ukraine’s 2024 cross-border operation into Kursk Oblast. Russian officials have repeatedly accused Ukrainian units of striking civilian and cultural sites in the border districts; Ukrainian officials have denied targeting churches and have said Russia itself has damaged hundreds of religious buildings inside Ukraine.
Before the war, the church was listed in Russian architectural catalogs as a wooden structure in a classical style, dedicated to the Great Martyr George the Victorious. It remained an active parish into 2026. After the September reports, regional authorities recorded it as a total loss.
Cover Image: The Russian Orthodox church of St. George before the war (left) and after the most recent airstrike (right) – courtesy of Russian media.
