September 31, 2011
"I couldn't help but share this with you," Fr. Dimitry said in a video recording on his blog. "It became known that the 31-year-old team captain, a dedicated Orthodox Christian, for many years had been helping sick children, donating large sums of money for their medical treatment. His last donation transaction was made just about a fifteen minutes before the fatal landing of that very Yak-42 airplane. Thoughts about him fill my heart with a feeling of joy and contrition… Please pray for his repose and the repose of his teammates."
Fr. Dimitry called his good deeds, done entirely in secret and only revealed after his death, the deeds of a "mature Christian". "I feel that if there are such young people in our country these days, truly things are not so bad after all," said the Orthodox pastor.
Fr. Dimitry's video (in Russian):