Russian priests bizarrely ‘fly over floods praying for areas to dry’ after ruinous deluge | World | News

Russian Orthodox priests took to the skies in a small aeroplane to pray for citizens following the collapse of a dam and flooding in the Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan on Monday.

Footage posted by Russian media outlets, later circulated by the advisor for the Ukrainian interior minister Anton Gerashchenko, shows four church representatives performing an aerial blessing in honour of the flood victims.

The floods, caused by rising water levels in the Ural River near Orenburg, inundated more than 10,000 homes and forced over 6,400 people, including more than 800 children, to evacuate, according to Russian state media TASS.

Drone footage from Orsk, which experienced the brunt of the floods that caused the dam to collapse, showed water partially submerging homes up to their roofs and nearby fields.

Since the beginning of the emergency, a group of priests from the Orsk Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church put their backs to work to provide assistance to communities in Orsk that were hardest hit by the floods.