MOUNT ATHOS, Greece –
The Ukrainian soldiers arrived in Greece with marks of war — one with a head scar, another with both legs amputated above the knee, some with invisible mental wounds from a three-year conflict that has ravaged their homeland.
The men, 22 in all, had taken a bus more than 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian city of Lviv to a monastery built on a cliff on the mountainous Athos peninsula in northern Greece, where they hoped to escape haunting memories of the battlefield.
In their four-day stay, part of a psychological support program organized by Ukrainian authorities, the soldiers made a pilgrimage to some dozen monasteries on the slopes of Mount Athos, a spiritual center since the 10th century.
