On the Day of Commemoration of the New Martyrs of Chimkent, Metropolitan Alexander Offered Prayer at Lisya Balka – the Place of the Martyric Death of Thousands of Orthodox Christians

20 November 2025. Shymkent. On the day of the Commemoration of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Chimkent, the Head of the Kazakhstan Metropolia, Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan, visited Lisya Balka – the place of the martyric death of countless Orthodox hierarchs, clergy, monastics and laypeople.

The hierarch offered the slavlenie to the New Martyrs of Chimkent and a memorial litiya for “the hierarchs, pastors, monastics and laypeople who suffered in the land of Kazakhstan in the time of fierce persecutions for the truth of God, for the Church of Christ, and who in this place were unjustly tortured and killed.”

Praying together with the metropolitan were Bishop Khrisanf of Chimkent and Turkestan, Bishop Klavdian of Taldykorgan (vicar of the Astana diocese), and clergy of the Almaty and Chimkent dioceses.

The sorrowfully famous Lisya Balka became the site of execution and the final resting place of thousands of Orthodox Christians. Among them were outstanding spiritual figures of the past century – Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan (Smirnov), Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), Archbishop Alexis (Orlov), Archbishop Nicholas (Klementiev), Bishop Eugene (Kobranov), Schema-Archimandrite Eleftherius (Pechenikov), Archpriest Vladimir Smirnov, Archpriest Nicholas Tolgsky, Hieromonk John (Laba), Hieromonk Hilarion (Tsurikov), Abbess Eva (Pavlova), many other hierarchs and clergy, and an innumerable multitude of ordinary believers.