Serbs to Dedicate a Church to Putin

Photo: kremlin.ru

BELGRADE - Next year, the residents of Banstol, a small town in Serbia, will have built a new church which, though officially dedicated to Mary Magdalene, is actually being built in honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sputnik Serbia reported.

Initial plans were to dedicate a wooden temple to the victims of Operation Storm in Srpska Krajina in 1995, which was the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence, but Bishop Vasilije of Srem managed to raise money for a bigger church.

Branko Simonovic, a Banstol native, who initiated the construction, told local media that the 200 sq. m. church would look much like the Russian St. Nicholas church in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Simonovic gave several reasons for the seemingly strange decision to build a Russian-style temple in Serbia. First, many Russians moved to Sremski Karlovci after the 1917...