In what appears to be its first act after the restart of an anti-terror operation to purge Kremlin-backed separatists from eastern Ukraine, the country’s elite Interior Ministry forces “liberated” the resort town of Svyatohirsk in northern Donetsk Oblast “from unlawful armed groups,” the ministry reported on its website.

Prior to the

operation, Ukrainian security officials had discovered the city’s monastery,

the Svyatohirsk Assumption Lavra of the Moscow Patriarchate, served as a

military base for the insurgents who have besieged the region.