Russia’s Pro-War Church Leader Brings Military Priests and Russian War Veterans to Norway’s Border

A senior Russian Orthodox Church official who publicly supports Russia’s war against Ukraine brought military priests and Russian war veterans to a church directly on the border with Norway for an annual religious service.

According to The Barents Observer on August 12, Metropolitan Mitrofan of Murmansk visited the Church of Boris and Gleb on August 6. The church stands in Borisoglebsk, a 3.6-square-kilometer Russian pen-exclave separated from the rest of Russia by the Pasvik River and located along the Norwegian border.

Mitrofan was accompanied by senior clergy and several priests with direct links to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Among them were Sergei Sherfetdinov and Leonid Suloev, both of whom had served in temporarily Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

Suloev previously served at a church in Olenya Bay, home to a base operated by Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known as GUGI. He also has a background in Russian special forces and fought with a Cossack unit in Ukraine in 2025, The Barents Observer reported.

Russian war veterans were also part of the delegation, including Roman Oleshkin, a former deputy commander of Russia’s 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade, now the 71st Motorized Rifle Division. Oleshkin fought in Ukraine before returning to the Murmansk region.

In 2025, he joined a regional government training program for Russian war veterans, and in August 2026 was appointed deputy mayor of Pechenga, a municipality bordering Norway and Finland.

During the service, Mitrofan defended Russia’s actions and its military. “We never attacked anyone. We all know this. It was always all the others who attacked us […] We have always represented the Light, and our Rus’ cannot live in any other way,” he said.

Mitrofan also claimed Russian soldiers “do not do nasty things” and “do not attack civilian buses with children.”

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War in Ukraine

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The metropolitan has repeatedly backed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, he spoke about the need to “de-Nazify” the country, while during a 2025 visit to Borisoglebsk he described Russia’s border with neighboring Nordic states as “a spiritual border that stands against the evil that is rolling over us.”

The gathering comes as Norway strengthens security along its 198-kilometer border with Russia amid concerns over increased Russian intelligence activity in the region.

Norwegian military officials have reported cases of Russian nationals posing as tourists and fishermen to collect information, while authorities are expanding surveillance, border infrastructure, and military presence in the country’s far north.

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