The series "Five Icons about War," created in 2022, continues my exploration of religious themes, a significant aspect of my work as a believer. This exploration began primarily within the project "Works of the Parishioners of the Paper Church of Tukhachevsk," an imaginary city existing in place of St. Petersburg in the absence of St. Petersburg. In the post-Soviet period, Tukhachevsk gained a certain notoriety due to the frequently mentioned "Paper Church of Tukhachevsk" in memoir and historical literature. This group consisted of approximately thirty people, united by an unordained young historian, a self-taught priest named Sergey Kvadratov, who adhered to ideas of a unique form of liberal Christianity.

A number of Tukhachevsk's underground artists, writers, poets, and musicians considered themselves parishioners of the Paper Church. The church was named as such because its followers did not venerate or keep traditional icons. This was partly to reduce the risk of persecution if religious artifacts were found in their homes, and partly due to Kvadratov's conviction about the dangers of anything that might lead believers to empty ritualism and seduce them with unexamined aesthetic appeal. Despite this, Kvadratov and his followers deeply believed in the importance of creativity inspired by religious experience and thought. As a result, members of the group actively created images and objects related to faith, often on paper and from paper, leading friends and followers to jokingly call their group the Paper Church (and Kvadratov, the Paper Archbishop). This name stuck and gradually lost its initial ironic tone.

I have created around 50 works by members of the "Tukhachevsk Paper Church" (individual icons, the "Apographies" cycle, the "Votive Boards of Leonid Zvonnikov" series, etc.) and am preparing to write a mock-fiction book "Thinner than a Cigarette Paper: A History of the Tukhachevsk Paper Church" in late 2023-early 2024.

At the beginning of 2022, I created two more iconographic works: "Adam's Repentance" and "The Exorcism of the Demon from the Cross"; previously, there were a few icons for personal use. However, after the onset of Russia's war against Ukraine in February 2022, I began to develop a series of icons unified by military themes in general and plots of this particular war. Currently, the series includes five icons created in mixed media: "The Descent of Christ into Mariupol," "The Trinity in Bucha," "The Rescue of Saint Christopher by Ukrainian Soldiers from the Basement of an Animal Shelter in Irpin," "The Dormition of Deserters," and "The Resurrection of Lazarus in a Military Hospital near Kupyansk."