Moscow, Russia - Captain Dmitry Kuzin turned to God after an incident three years ago, when his entire unit escaped a rebel ambush in southern Chechnya without a scratch. The day before the ambush, an Orthodox priest had visited Kuzin's unit and prayed with his men.
"I know that some men attended the prayers, which were held right in the field, due to fatigue. Others prayed because they felt how close they were to death -- of their friends, or themselves," said Kuzin, a slim man in his mid-30s, as he walked out of an Orthodox church in southern Moscow and crossed himself. "I was among those who went there because of fatigue.
"After that day, I began thinking that maybe God really stretched out his hand over us. After all, we were fighting against non-Christians," Kuzin said, adding that since their escape from the ambush a few men in his unit had joined him in becoming true believers, and now wore crosses and prayed in church.
The influence of the Orthodox Church in the military has been growing with the encouragement of the top brass over recent years, and it could get a further fillip later this year as officials look for ways to improve morale after a brutal hazing on New Year's Eve that led to a conscript's legs and genitals being amputated, prompting a national outcry.
When asked about the case in his annual news conference this week, President Vladimir Putin called for greater efforts at moral education in the military. One proposal already under consideration by the Defense Ministry is the formal recruitment of chaplains into some military units.
Orthodox priests already preach in many units, including those fighting in the North Caucasus, but currently do not have the formal status of chaplains. They are allowed in under agreements that unit commanders sign with local eparchies.
Defense Ministry officials have welcomed the idea of hiring Orthodox chaplains as a way to bolster soldiers' morale and combat the incidence of hazing and suicide in the military. But nongovernmental organizations have raised concerns about the exclusion of other faiths and denominations, and about official pressure on soldiers to attend Orthodox services.
Some religious scholars also claim that such a close relationship between the Orthodox Church and the military would be unconstitutional, as it would blur the lines between church and state.
"In principle, we are ready to take priests onto the Defense Ministry's staff," Nikolai Reznik, head of the ministry's department responsible for maintaining troop morale, told RIA-Novosti in a recent interview. "We need priests who are ready to work with servicemen at the local level, right in the military units."
Reznik said that none of the four faiths recognized by the state -- Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism -- were yet ready to send thousands of representatives into the military.
One of the Orthodox Church's main spokesmen, Vsevolod Chaplin, who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's external relations department, said in October that there were plans afoot for the military to hire chaplains, but that the church still had issues to resolve.
"Society is pushing us for the institution of the regular military priesthood to appear and I think that we have all prerequisites for this," he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Sergei Burda, head of the Defense Ministry's department responsible for contacts with religious organizations, said the hiring of chaplains will be decided on a case-by-case basis "if such a need arises."
Burda said Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov would consider chaplains after a round of public consultations this year.
Currently, about 150 Orthodox Christian churches operate at military bases across the country, and this number is growing, he said. In these units, the rate of suicide among servicemen is lower and hazing is less common than elsewhere in the military, Burda said.
"We are ready to use the Russian Orthodox Church to fight suicide and hazing," he said. "We are focusing on this."
The law currently makes no provision for military chaplains and clearly forbids the creation of religious groups in units and the use of military authority to advocate any religion. Off-duty servicemen are allowed to participate in religious ceremonies as private citizens.
Burda said the military had general cooperation agreements with the Orthodox Church and the Council of Muftis, the top Muslim organization in Russia.
Burda and Chaplin said cults and proselytizing were not allowed in the military.
Oleg Askalenok, head of the Russian Military Christian Union, an NGO uniting mostly Protestant groups seeking to preach among the military, said the Orthodox Church was trying to monopolize religion in the military by branding other Christian denominations, including Protestants, as cults.
"We are allowed to work in some units where we have friendly commanders, but only until the day when a local Orthodox Christian eparchy gets to hear about it," he said. "Then, the commanders bar us, saying they don't want problems with their superiors."
Askalenok cited the example of 30 Protestants serving in a unit in the Kaluga region who asked their commanders to allow them to have a prayer room on the base, only to have their plea rejected. He said such initiatives by Orthodox Christians, in contrast, usually found favor with commanders.
Askalenok and Sergei Mozgovoi, head of the Liberty of Consciousness Institute, a Moscow-based think tank advocating freedom of religious expression, said that at the annual seminars held jointly by the General Staff and the Orthodox Church, which they had attended, senior Orthodox priests told officers that other Christian groups, including Protestants, were cults.
"There is also a lot of hate speech against Muslims and, regretfully, not a single officer stands up to cut it short," Mozgovoi said.
Mozgovoi said the Orthodox Church's de facto monopoly over religion in the military threatened to incite religious conflict in the ranks, where many servicemen belong to other faiths and denominations, and accused the top brass of buddying up with the Orthodox clergy.
Burda said, however, that unit commanders attended religious services and would not allow any propagating of xenophobia or religious intolerance.
The head of the Moscow Patriarchate's military liaison department, Dimitry Smirnov, declined a request for comment.
Mozgovoi said introducing military chaplains was against the Constitution, which clearly separates church and state.
"Also, there are no guidelines defining what and how the chaplains would preach to soldiers," he said. "Without this, their teaching will be reduced to the propagation of xenophobia."
Sergei Melkov, a consultant to the Council of Muftis on military issues, said the position of the senior Muslim clergy was that no single faith should dominate in the military.
He warned that if armed conflict in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus intensified, and the military were to receive its religious instruction exclusively from the Orthodox Church, units could split along religious and ethnic lines and the country's unity could be jeopardized.
Also, there could be a conflict between Orthodox priests and the 2,500 officers who are responsible for morale in the military, Melkov said.
"Giving priests the status of chaplains would look like acknowledging that these officers have been failing at their jobs," he said.