Russia’s red button is in the hands of God
During a service this autumn, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow wished a happy birthday to one of his congregants in the Church of Christ the Saviour. It was no ordinary salutation. Radii Il’kaev, who had just turned 85, was a nuclear physicist who had worked for much of his life in the secretive town of Sarov, the birthplace of the Soviet atomic bomb. Long before it became a centre of nuclear defence, the town had been home to a monastery where one of Russia’s most popular saints — Serafim — had lived and prayed.
