A Mysterious Monastery Death

At the end of January, Natalia Prostakova, a 36-year-old woman from Yekaterinburg, went missing. Two weeks later, she was found dead on the island of Valaam.

For the six months prior to her death, Prostakova had been working as a trudnitsa – a lay volunteer worker – at the island's men's monastery. The circumstances of her death remain mysterious: some say Natalia hanged herself under the influence of demons; others say she froze to death near one of Valaam's most visited hermitages.

Journalist Olesya Ostapchuk, of Reporter's Stories, spent two weeks living as a trudnitsa at the monastery in order to understand what Natalia Prostakova went through and why no one around her was able to help. This article was first published in Russian by Reporter Stories. Stories and images by Olesya Ostapchuk.

Demons Closing In

At the train station in Priozersk, the trudnitsy are easy to spot: a dozen women step off the commuter train wearing headscarves and lugging suitcases, large backpacks and bags. I notice two who are moving briskly toward the taxis and ask to share their cab. The car will take us to the monastery's dock on Lake Ladoga, where a passenger boat will carry us on to Valaam.

One of my companions looks exactly as you'd picture a devout church grandmother – small, quick, wearing glasses and a headscarf. This is not her first trip to Valaam, and she isn't coming as a volunteer worker but as hired help filling a vacancy. For her, these trips are a way to earn good money. The pay is better than back home in Belarus, and the monastery covers room and board.

Upon arrival on the island, a novice monk from the Monastery's Order Service assigns us to work in the farm's refectory and shows us to our kelya – the room (cell) where we will live. From that moment I begin adjusting to what will be my life for the coming weeks: a headscarf and long skirt at all times, and an entirely new vocabulary. Everyone around you is "brothers and sisters." Most activities require a blessing. Your room is a kelya. Work is a poslushanie – an obedience. Instead of thank you, people say "God save you" (Спаси Бог) or "The Lord keep you” (Храни Господь) The outcome of any endeavor is "as the Lord wills it" (как Господь управит). And instead of good night: "an angel to your sleep" (ангела ко сну) After several long services, the prayers stay in your head and rise naturally to your lips.

The monastery on Valaam dates to the fifteenth century. For a long time, the island was part of the Russian Empire; after the 1917 revolution, it passed to Finland, and during the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40 it found itself in the combat zone. In the autumn of 1944, Soviet power was definitively established on Valaam, and the monastery complex was put to practical use. Workers were brought in from the mainland and housed on the island. Only in the late 1980s did monks return to Valaam. After the monastery was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, ordinary residents were gradually pushed out. Those who refused to relocate to the mainland were evicted through the courts. The monastery needed the island to itself. Former apartments of local residents now house the trudniki. We were settled into one of those apartments.

In the kelya, one of the trudnitsy greets us. Reluctantly, clearly trying to get it over with as fast as possible, she runs through the basic rules of communal living. I will understand this state myself later, when on my day off I am obliged to give the same tour of the kelya to another newcomer. The monastery has no one designated for this, and most of the sisters don't have the reserves of goodwill left to welcome new arrivals.

What's more, we've already stepped on someone's toes without meaning to. Because of our arrival, another trudnitsa – Dasha, whose time here was running out – is forced to move up to a top bunk, which she is not happy about. To those of us who have come for just two weeks, the struggle over such small comforts seems strange – over where to sleep, over basic conditions. But for those who have been living here for months and know they will stay much longer, it turns out to matter enormously.

"Have you ever worked in an all-women office where there's constant scheming?" asks 47-year-old Yulya, who will be working my same shift, in response to my bewilderment.

"No," I answer.

"Then you won't understand."

In the night, Dasha will come back, grab the belongings she'd left under the bed that Sveta had taken, and rush off somewhere, slamming the door. In the morning, Yulya will say that the monastery is the place where demons are thickest, and that the sisters face many temptations.

"And how do you know when the demons are closing in on you?" I ask.

"When the sisters start coming at you – that's when you'll know," she answers.

What Matters More Than Prayer

Every morning on working days, a car comes for us around nine and drives us to the farm. Unlike days off – when there are only two meals, at midday and in the evening – on working days we have time not only for morning prayers but for breakfast as well. Afterwards, we divide up the work. The central task is always the same: twice daily to feed some 50 monks and workers. It is typical canteen labor – peeling, chopping, boiling, frying, setting the tables in the refectory, washing dishes, floors and surfaces. For this we work 10 hours with minimal breaks, on our feet almost the entire time.

On the first working day, there are four of us in the shift. Sveta is sent to wash dishes, Yulya takes on the role of cook, and I work alongside my kelya neighbor Anya as her assistant. In my first task, I am given several kilograms of onions to dice finely. I try to work faster, but I'm not used to volumes like this and I'm struggling. Yulya urges me on, warning that we won't get the men fed in time. Tears from the onions blur my eyes.

"Read the Jesus Prayer," advises Yulya. "Obedience is very important, girls. Obedience is more important than prayers. It's important to do everything with love, not to cut corners, to try your best – and then the Lord will accept your obedience!"

A few hours into rapid chopping of garlic, onion and potato, everything begins to swim before my eyes. Next up is a large trout – still alive. Yulya asks who will clean the fish. Sveta refuses. Yulya then calls out to me:

"Olesya-a-a, come clean the fish!"

"Olesya, don't," Sveta stops me. "I'll clean it – where is the fish?" She clarifies and heads off to the kitchen station.

"I just can't stand that," she'll explain to me later. "She can see you can't snap back at her aggressively, that you're all polite – so she piles on you, and on anyone she thinks is weaker. I hate that. Go pick on someone your own size. Growing up, I only ever fought with the toughest boys in the yard – and I always protected the weaker ones. I hate cleaning fish. But I can see you've never cleaned a fish in your life. So of course I'll go. If anyone gives you a hard time here, tell me right away."

Over lunch, Yulya assures us that she treats us gently – far better than the sisters treated her when she first arrived for her shift in the refectory a month before us.

"When I first came here, they ran me ragged! I was always 'fetch this, bring that, move along, don't get in the way.' And I'm a normal, reasonable person, mind you. I don't shout, I don't insult anyone, I don't curse, nothing. But they shouted at me: 'Move it! What are you standing there for? Come on, faster!'" – Yulya's imitation of those voices is so convincing it becomes uncomfortable.

"Has anyone ever gotten punched in the face here?" Sveta wonders.

A dead silence falls over the sisters.

"No," answers Yulya.

"I could arrange it," said Sveta.

The sisters go quiet and keep eating.

"It's just not normal, working like this – four people laying a table for 50. Look at the cars some of these priests drive. They couldn't buy a food processor?" Sveta bristles.

"The father superior blessed exactly this number of people for the obedience in the refectory," explains one of the trudnitsy.

"Girls, obedience is very important—" Yulya starts up again.

"What, have you got the place bugged? Can't anyone here have a normal conversation?" Sveta can't take it anymore.

"The Lord Will Provide"

It was here in this farm refectory that Natalia Prostakova was serving her obedience in the autumn of 2025. She, like Sveta, was not what you'd call a typical trudnitsa. In her secular photos, she's a blonde with bold eyebrows, lash extensions, and red lipstick on plumped lips. Even at the monastery, many called her "the doll."

The contrast with her Telegram Stories is striking. First, there are travels: the opening of drag-racing season in Altai, a safari in Sri Lanka and Kenya, hookah against the backdrop of a Maldives sunset. And then, suddenly, Valaam: videos with cats (there really are a lot of them here), reflections on how, on the island, she's losing interest in the opposite sex, photos of religious literature from the monastery library.

In September 2025, Natalia was posting Stories of herself drinking "brotherhood coffee" overlooking the lake and wandering alone through the forest in a pink headscarf, a white plush shawl and fashionable glasses, trying to find the rock locals call "The Master of Valaam." Then she wrote of miracles happening to her on Valaam and her "pious wishes" coming true. That same autumn, after reminiscing about luxurious vacations abroad, she wrote: "We daydreamed about warm places long enough – now we're heading to our most beloved Valaam service, The All-Night Vigil. Because it is worth more than all that worldly vanity." Later she posted a photo of communion bread – a prosfora – and wrote that it brought her more joy than a watch that cost R200,000: "Perhaps it all comes down to who gives the gift."

The sisters insist: on Valaam, you must be careful with your words, because God and the angels hear you immediately. Miracles are a constant topic of conversation. "One of the trudnitsy came here because her relationship with her daughter had broken down – the daughter seemed not to care about her mother at all," one of the sisters recounts. "And while she was here, her daughter started calling, writing, worrying – and in the end came to the island herself to serve her own obedience."

 

The degree to which some people here have come to rely on God can reach an extreme. Half my questions to my kelya neighbor Anya are met with the same invariable answer: "I don't know, we'll see how the Lord provides." This applies equally to whether she'll make it to the morning service, when she'll leave the island, which city she'll live in, and where she'll work.

"There's so much pasta – the Lord has multiplied it!" one of the sisters rejoices in the kitchen.

"Once, the Lord multiplied our bread rolls for us just like that," adds another.

"Come on, don't go off the rails," Sveta said to me after I start playing along. "We've got 'the Lord sent coffee,' 'the Lord helped me bake the pie' all around us already. Let's not add to it. Anything you can handle yourself – don't ask the Lord for it."

For all her irony, Sveta herself makes every effort to attend all the services and considers herself a believer. From what she shares, it's clear her life has not been easy – a great deal of violence and injustice, though she almost never feels sorry for herself.

"I just want to believe that somewhere in the world there is still something bright and real," she said when I ask why she holds on to faith.

Sveta prays constantly for the war to end. In one of the chapels, where visitors leave written petitions, I pull from the wall some slips of paper someone has tucked into a zip-lock bag to keep them dry, and read what people asked for. Nearly everyone asks for health, relief from illness – one from acne, another from cancer – and, like Sveta, "for the war to end."

Nearly two months into her time on Valaam, in September 2025, Natalia Prostakova would write in her Stories that she had finally come to understand "this world completely," and that, if she were a man, she would enter this monastery forever.

Curse or Blessing

Natalia was born in Reftinsky, a small town of about 15,000 in Sverdlovsk Oblast, 110 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. A family acquaintance said that Natalia's mother, Tatiana, worked at a bread factory there. In the early 2000s, her older daughter – Natalia’s sister – was killed in a car accident. "And now the second daughter has vanished..." the acquaintance said.

In the 2010s, Natalia moved from Reftinsky to Yekaterinburg, married, finished university, took out a mortgage on an apartment, and opened a nail salon. Then she divorced, began a new relationship, and, according to her mother, gave up working. "She was living with a young man – though what does 'living together' really mean? On and off, on and off. Always on edge, depression, one thing and another, and then they broke up," Tatiana said.

For a period, judging by her social media, Natalia tried working in tourism – selling packages to foreign resorts. In October 2024, an ambulance came for her. According to a source familiar with the situation, the call record listed a diagnosis of F23 – the code for acute and transient psychotic disorders, characterized by a sudden, brief onset of delusions, hallucinations and confusion.

"Those relationships wore her out completely – she became a completely different person," her mother said. "That's when she found the Church. She visited Ganina Yama, the Sredneuralsky Monastery, then went to Diveyevo and stayed there a month or a month and a half. After that, she volunteered on Valaam."

Following an F23 episode, the majority of patients make a full recovery, according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). It is no surprise, then, that many of Prostakova's acquaintances on Valaam noticed nothing unusual about her.

Natalia's first assignment on Valaam, where she arrived in the summer of 2025, was at the gardens of the All Saints Hermitage – picking currants. Not all parts of the monastery complex are accessible to trudnitsy: the island housing the All Saints Hermitage (Всехсвятский скит) is open to women only once a year, for the feast day of its patron; the Forerunner Island (Предтеченский остров) with its eponymous hermitage is off-limits to women entirely. These restrictions are grounded in old Valaam tradition.

"And what is most difficult of all the obediences?" I ask one of the experienced trudnitsy who has worked every sort.

"People," she answers. "If the sisters are good and you can find common ground, then every obedience is fine."

On September 11, Prostakova was assigned – judging by her blog – to obedience in the farm refectory. "Looking rather worse for wear, since the constant hustle begins at five in the morning," Natalia noted in her Stories on her second day at the farm. "By the end of the sixth week, the first fatigue has set in – not so much physical, though. What covers it all over is the grace that comes after services and prayer services."

In this Story I recognize a great deal. My legs and back – like those of the other sisters – ached after the first shift in the refectory. On our days off, many trudnitsy lay flat in their kelyas because they had nothing left for any kind of leisure. Sveta and I, meanwhile, walked to the hermitages – typically 25,000 to 30,000 steps a day.

"Natasha loved walking around the island too, and often went alone," said a pilgrim who knew her, also named Natalia. "Especially since she had conflicts with the sisters. I think that's partly why she was often more comfortable on her own."

Prostakova attended services regularly, as did we, though no one at the monastery keeps track of this. There are many services, and they are conducted, accordingly, "in the monastic manner" – meaning they last far longer than ordinary services "in the world": the midnight office at five in the morning with dozens of prostrations, matins, the hours, the liturgy, vespers, compline, prayer services. I did not attend all of them, but after a week of this prayer marathon I was falling off my feet from exhaustion: my mind could no longer stay awake but wanted to sleep, while my body could not sleep because of the accumulated tension.

Added discomfort came from the sisters, who would sometimes say something cutting in passing – one accusing you of being spoiled, another scolding you for not being able to manage something she had mastered long ago. Sometimes after such remarks you wanted to cry, but to do that you would need to be alone, and finding solitude in a monastery where everyone is always visible – like at summer camp – is not so easy.

After a week of our obedience, Sveta mentioned that she'd had a panic attack on the ride back from work in the minibus.

"What's that?" Yulya asked, puzzled. "Next time come to me – I'll read a prayer over you."

"No, it's fine, I know how to handle it," Sveta said, deflecting – she had once begun studying to be a psychologist.

"No, you come to me and we'll read the prayer together."

About ten days in, the lack of personal space left me feeling a strong irritation toward my roommates. In the monastery, this is usually called iskushenie – temptation – and attributed to demons.

Natalia Prostakova more than once hinted in her blog that she wasn't getting along with the sisters. But she explained it to herself differently. "I thought it was a curse – turns out it's a blessing," she wrote beneath a quote from the Venerable Pimen the Great about how it is not good to be liked by everyone, and that "if you seek the love of men, you will be deprived of the love of God."

The Woman in Black

"I saw her in the summer of 2025 – she was such a Barbie: pink headscarves, pretty little hair clips, pouty lips," said one of the trudnitsy about Natalia Prostakova. "And then she moved from the farm to the Holy Gates, became a church attendant. And when I saw her six months later, I didn't recognize her at all: standing there like a little nun, headscarf, all in black."

This is Lena – she has been serving her obedience at the farm for three years. When we meet, she asks to be called "Lena of the Raccoons" and explains: "My task was to tame raccoons and get them to produce offspring." Caring for these animals is probably the most atypical obedience in the monastery. The idea of keeping raccoons at the farm came from her supervisor, Father Agapy. The monastery waited a long time for the appropriate blessing, and in 2021 two young raccoons, raised by breeders in Krasnodar, were brought to Valaam. The pair were named Rocky and Smoky.

Now, whenever Lena spots something suitable for her animals – a bunch of grapes, for instance – she immediately asks: "Can I have that? It's for the little raccoons." Before the monastery, Lena had never worked with animals. By training she is a violinist, and said she studied at the Gnesin Academy. She worked in Moscow in an office, in sales, until the company closed at the start of the war.

When Lena was assigned to the raccoons last April, they were completely unsocialized. According to her, the animals had been mishandled and given insufficient affection. As a result, they were aggressive both with people and with each other. The monastery had hoped the female would become pregnant, but Smoky would not let Rocky anywhere near her.

Lena began reading extensively about how to improve the raccoons' lives, spending more time with them, making toys for them to channel their aggression, bringing treats – in short, throwing herself into their animal lives. It worked. This year on Forgiveness Sunday, the raccoons, in their attempts to conceive, tore apart half their enclosure.

Lena recounts all of this sitting in the kitchen, dabbing deep bite wounds on her legs with iodine and brilliant green. It turns out that when a female raccoon becomes pregnant, she grows more aggressive toward her mate. Lena was injured while breaking up a fight between Smoky and Rocky, after which the raccoons were separated into individual enclosures.

After her obedience, Lena goes to the service.

"When I arrived here, I was just an ordinary office worker," she said. "But when you start living here, you gradually get drawn in – you start going to services, taking communion, going to confession. But no one forces you to do any of it. I've been here five years, and only in the last two years have I been attending services regularly. I came for the obedience – and obedience is above prayer! There's a difference between coming for two weeks and beginning to live here for months at a time. And that's why the missing Natasha changed so much – she moved from the farm to the Holy Gates! Everything is different there."

The Holy Gates guesthouse is spoken of on Valaam as the strictest place in terms of rules. The actual obedience assigned to those who live there varies: some sisters serve in the church, some work in the gardens, some at the farm, as we did. But where our kelya is simply a room in an apartment, the Holy Gates is more like a dormitory – 12 beds to a room – and the strictness of the schedule depends on the specific house manager. The manager checks the refrigerator to make sure the sisters have only fasting food; anything else immediately raises questions. In the morning, she turns on the lights and, as in a barracks, calls out: "Rise and shine!" The sisters from Holy Gates gather for communal prayers. Lights out is equally strict – some were not allowed to brush their teeth after 11 p.m.

"I'd been around the island too, ended up there for a stint, served my obedience. I ran away from there immediately. Because, girls, it just – brainwashing, it's unreal. All those sisters who live there, they're like quasi-nuns. They all start dressing alike, walking alike. In short, there's this hazing culture inside," said one of the trudnitsy. "The newcomers arrive and get sent to scrub the toilets with what might as well be a toothbrush. And they only put young girls in there – so no one snores. So they're all pretty, all turned out nicely! And you sit down to have tea with them and they've got ideas like, my grandmother sent a sign from heaven that I'm meant to live on this island. I said: 'Girls, who's going to have children? You're 20 years old! You're not nuns, you're not in a convent – what is this?' And the hazing? I think it's because the young ones have nowhere to put their energy, so they turn it into that."

It was specifically in Holy Gates that tensions in Natalia Prostakova's relationships with the sisters grew worse.

"When she was at the farm, she became close with Father Agapy – he was important to her spiritually, she went to him for guidance, and even after she moved to Holy Gates she would sometimes walk all the way to the farm to visit him," said the pilgrim Natalia, who knew Prostakova. "And so the sisters started spreading rumors that if she kept going to the farm, she must not be very happy in her role as church attendant. She was deeply upset by this. And, as I understand it, she was also troubled by certain comments because she's 36, and every so often someone would say something about how she had no children and her personal life hadn't worked out."

"Women love to give advice when no one asks for it. Please don't," Natalia wrote in her Stories on October 6. "Advice of the day from my spiritual father: 'Listen to what the hieromonks tell you. Do not listen to women.'"

From what another pilgrim who knew Prostakova recounted, she did indeed have real conflicts with the sisters.

"She once stayed late after the evening service, praying with another girl in the church, and the sisters wouldn't let her into the guesthouse. She said she screamed and banged on the doors. But they simply ignored her. It was cold outside – she had to spend the night in the church. In the morning, she asked why they hadn't opened the door. They said they were for some reason afraid to," the pilgrim recalled.

Even without any hazing, the established residents of our kelya don't like the arrival of someone new.

"Who's making the space vibrate so strongly? The new girl?" my roommate asks me after yet another trudnitsa moves in.

"Did you see her bags? Everything smells like it's been treated for bedbugs. She just moved from another obedience – she might have brought us some kind of insects!" added another.

"Girls, come on," Sveta said, baffled. "The girl doesn't have a suitcase, so she packed everything in bags. She's been on the island for months – of course she's accumulated stuff."

The Male Contingent

"Every new man brings new grief," I hear as I wake up in the morning. The sisters in the kelya are already talking about their pasts.

"I lived with an alcoholic for years," Sveta said. "All my life I'd had men of status, men who helped me financially. But this one was ten years younger than me, attached himself to me, and said: 'I love you so much!' – with such feeling. But then he'd go on these benders and do terrible things. For a year I kept telling his parents: 'He needs to go to a rehab center,' and they'd say: 'Yes, yes, later.' I went to see him on Valentine's Day, and he gave me the latest iPhone. But then I smell alcohol on his breath and I say: 'Is this starting again?' I packed my things, got on the train, and went home. A while later, I notice he's gone quiet. And then early in the month a friend of his calls: 'Sveta, he's lying there dead.' When alcoholics come out of a bender, their blood pressure spikes, and he went into fibrillation. Somehow no one saved him."

"That sounds very familiar," said Anya quietly. Her husband went missing in action during the war. Her confessor recommended she come to Valaam.

Yulya, who coined the apt phrase about new grief, is already divorced. Throughout their marriage, she said, her husband beat her – even when she was pregnant. And now her only son is fighting in Ukraine.

"Olesya, but that's not for your ears," Yulya corrected herself immediately. "Don't listen to us. You need to get married. I just – girls – when I came to the Church, I realized: not one man ever made me as happy as the Lord does. With no one have I felt such grace as I feel after services, such a sense of true happiness... You know, you can actually find yourself a husband here on Valaam, among the trudniki. Why not? For one thing, the man will be a churchgoing man..."

The first trudnik I meet is Dima, a former drug addict. He said he was on cocaine but always keeps his wrists covered. The second, Sasha, is surprised that he was sent to take communion immediately after confession.

"Isn't that how it works for everyone?" I ask. I was given communion right after confession too.

"No, many of us have the kind of sins behind us that they don't let you receive right away. I was even surprised they let me through."

"Do you have a lot of grave sins?"

"Well, what do you think – by the age of 35? Of course I do."

The third – an older man – approaches me during my obedience in the refectory and leaves me at a loss: "There are luminous people like you in this world, and I am – as a human being – shit." Then he turns and walks away.

When word gets out that I speak several foreign languages, it is suggested that I meet "the Australian" – 27-year-old Zhenya. We begin speaking in English, but after a few sentences it becomes clear that Zhenya's Russian is excellent. It's his native language. He was born in St. Petersburg; when he was in primary school, his mother moved with him to Australia, where he lived until his early 20s, before deciding a year ago to return to Russia.

"The money situation there just wasn't working out, a dead end," he explained.

"And here it's better? I can tell you: Russia is clearly not getting better any time soon," Sveta said.

"I actually think Russia will get better."

"What were you doing before the monastery?"

"Different things – I never stayed in one place for long. I could work as a tractor driver. But when I don't feel like working, I run a business."

"What kind?" Sveta asks.

"I sell prohibited substances," Zhenya said calmly.

"People sell drugs on monastery grounds?" I ask, taken aback.

"Well, not here at the farm. But over there near the church where you live – you could find some," he said.

Hypothetically, buying drugs in Priozersk and smuggling them to Valaam would not be difficult – luggage is not inspected on the boat. In 2020, one man was caught doing this very thing: a 38-year-old plumber working a rotation brought with him a bongo drum, inside of which was a foil-wrapped packet of brolamfetamine, a powerful hallucinogen. The plumber had prior convictions for crimes related to the illegal trafficking of weapons and narcotics. The media have also written about trudniki who are recovering drug addicts.

At Easter, when we run into Zhenya again, he reeks of alcohol.

"Yeah, had a little beer," he admits. "Lots of people in the kelyas drink in the evenings."

"And Dima, who lives with you – does he too?"

"Nah, he's one of the prayer guys," Zhenya corrects himself. "Instead of alcohol he reads prayers constantly."

Buying alcohol on Valaam presents no problem, even during Lent. Not far from the church there is a shop. The first day we go in to buy something for tea, the inventory is shocking. No bread, no fruit, no sweets left on the shelves. But every variety of alcohol is well stocked. Every second man in the queue takes a beer. That is how some of the seasonal workers and trudniki unwind after the workday. On other days, the shop receives cheese rounds, biscuits and other food – but the selection of alcohol and cigarettes never runs low. A similar shop that previously operated on monastery grounds belonged to a local resident, but it was shut down. The stated reason was that the Church objected to the proximity of alcohol.

"The monastery usually distances itself from this by saying it's a private shop and they have no control over it," said a trudnitsa who has been living on the island for several months. "But everyone understands that nothing on Valaam can happen without the monastery's knowledge. I think the Church simply finds it convenient: they know that without alcohol, many of the men wouldn't come. And the monastery needs the labor."

Father Nikon's Swagger

"I've lived in monasteries in many places, and I can tell you: Valaam is the Rublyovka of monasteries," one of the sisters told me. [FN: Rublyovka: the elite western Moscow suburb associated with Russia's super-wealthy.]

The residents are in keeping with that status. The St. Vladimir Hermitage houses Patriarch Kirill's residence. There, too, is a guesthouse for distinguished visitors known as the Vladimir Putin residence.

Luxury for ordinary residents is also very much in evidence: because of its own trout farm, a trudnik may find on the lunch table a generous piece of red fish or even a sandwich spread with red caviar. Lightly salted trout at the local café costs R3,600 per kilogram; hot-smoked trout, R2,200.

At Easter, tourists arrive in designer clothes and stylish outfits, wheeling their suitcases to the Winter Guesthouse. Young women buy Easter cakes (kulichy) at the front desk to have them blessed at the church. Prices start at R800. The church shop carries a wide selection of Orthodox jewelry. There are bracelets for R50,000-60,000, crosses set with emeralds or sapphires for R10,000. Prayer services can even be ordered remotely: a commemorative at the proskomedia for 40 days costs R500 per name; the Unceasing Psalter for one year, R2,000 per name.

Some parishioners attend services wearing bright lipstick, which the monks then have to scrub from the glass protecting the icons. In the confession queue, men of a distinctly brutal appearance stand waiting – the kind you'd more readily expect to see at a gangland showdown or at the head of a funeral business: the mannerisms of a street tough, leather jackets, gold chains.

"The service today was very grand. I go up to confession, and Father Nikon is swaggering around like a crime boss," my kelya neighbor Anya reported. "Those guys turn to me, look me up and down, and say: 'Well, we're going to be here a while.'"

When we enter the service at Easter after the Procession of the Cross, security personnel push us to the side – bodyguards have been posted for someone important and high-ranking in the church that day. Most of the services are filmed by several cameras. All of it is broadcast on the monastery's social media.

Natalia Prostakova even filmed room tours for her blog from the Pilgrim House, emphasizing that she used to show her followers expensive foreign hotels, and now she was showing them a room on Valaam.

An Abandoned Kitten

In January 2026, Natalia Prostakova left Valaam – but instead of returning home, she stayed in St. Petersburg. "I feel like a kitten abandoned to fend for itself in this big city," she wrote in her Stories on Jan. 23. In Petersburg, judging by her social media, she visited restaurants and – still posting quotes from schema-archimandrites [FN: Monks and nuns take vows in stages, progressing toward the Great Schema, which is characterized by unceasing prayer, strict fasting, and a total detachment from worldly cares.] and archpriests – lingered over expensive fur coats and cars, about which she also wrote in her blog.

On January 29, below a repost of another image about men and separation, she wrote: "I have forgiven everyone." On January 30, she posted a Story of a boat once again mooring at the island, then a video from snow-covered Valaam, with her voice in the background: "At last – we are in a fairy tale, we are in paradise." On January 31, 2026, she posted a Story with the caption: "Valaam, how hard it is to leave you." Shortly after, she went missing.

Many who have spent time on Valaam genuinely do not want to leave, because here you develop new social bonds and a predictable life. The media have even coined a term for this phenomenon: valaamka – an inexplicable pull, an acute compulsion to keep returning.

"When you have to leave the island, there's this ache, it's heavy," one of the sisters explains. "It's like you're disoriented – like, how do I go back to the world? I've been told that if you live here for three years, you won't want to go back to the world at all."

The disappearance of Natalia Prostakova continues to raise questions. "We don't even know for certain when she went missing," said the pilgrim who knew her. "I had already left the island by then and was in touch with her friends. And no one could tell me exactly at what point she disappeared. Some said she had been at a service and was behaving strangely. But what did that mean? What does a person have to do for people to notice something is wrong? And why, if they did notice, did they leave her alone?"

Another trudnitsa told me that ,on the day she disappeared, Prostakova had apparently entered the altar space – something strictly forbidden to women.

Timeline of Natalia Prostakova's Life and Death on Valaam

• Summer 2025 – Natalia arrives on Valaam as a trudnitsa.
• Autumn 2025 – serves her obedience in the farm refectory.
• December 2025 – moves to Holy Gates and becomes a church attendant.
• January 2026 – leaves Valaam, stays in St. Petersburg.
• Jan. 30-31, 2026 – returns to the island.
• Feb. 2, 2026 – goes missing.
• Feb. 19, 2026 – the LizaAlert volunteer search team announces that Natalia has been found dead.

The LizaAlert volunteer bulletin said that Prostakova's whereabouts had been unknown since February 2. Some witnesses said they saw her for the last time at the morning service; others said it was at the evening service.

"Friends, on February 2, my friend Natasha, who was living on Valaam, disappeared. She simply vanished from the island," wrote her friend, the trudnitsa Serafima. "She couldn't have left. It's unlikely, but there are many people from the island here – if anyone saw something, knows something, but is perhaps afraid to speak, I am asking you, please let me know." Serafima noted at the time that although there are cameras on the island, Natalia apparently had not been captured by any of them. "Everyone has already looked. Nothing. Dogs are searching, security services with drones. She is nowhere," the girl wrote, beside herself with worry.

Before she disappeared, Natalia had managed to write to her mother.

"In the night before the second, messages came from her, but I was asleep and only saw them in the morning,” she said in an interview with E1.ru. “She wrote: 'Mama, is there a curse on you?' And then: 'I haven't been able to sleep for five days.' I asked why she couldn't sleep and suggested she buy some glycine. She replied: 'OK.' Just one word. I wrote to her that she should stop wandering and come home, that we were all waiting for her. That message was read – and then the connection was cut off."

Tatiana said at the time that her daughter's purse and documents had been in her kelya. "People at the service noticed that her condition was unstable. Well, stop the person, talk to her, keep her in the church! But no one paid attention, or didn't want to," she said.

When I read that article, the indifference of the sisters surprised me – right up until we found ourselves in a similar situation.

Howling Like a Man

"Did you hear Anya growling in the night? She was howling like a man, even though her voice in real life is so soft and thin," Sveta, who sleeps next to her, said in the morning.

"Well, her husband is missing in the war – maybe it's him howling through her," another sister suggested.

"Actually, that kind of thing can happen with certain mental disorders – the voice can shift like that," I said. To me, Anya had seemed perfectly lucid, if fanatically devout – though that is standard here.

The whole kelya grew alarmed only when Anya said that she had encountered her missing husband on Valaam: "Can you imagine – he was walking with another woman and pretended not to know me." A day later it turned out that her husband was there not alone but with a twin brother, and they were in a military unit – "probably transferred here from the front." A few days after that ,she announced that her husband had approached her in the church and she had turned away from him proudly. He had also apparently said he was going to be married on Valaam to another trudnitsa whom Anya had met on the boat to the monastery. Valaam has never performed a wedding – the monastery has no such option.

Only looking more carefully at Anya did we notice that she lied about who she had met and which obediences she had attended, simulated phone calls – claiming her sisters or a novice from the Order Service were calling her. In the kitchen, Anya would sometimes do one action when another was needed. For instance, when they were baking Easter cakes and she was supposed to zest citrus, she peeled the orange instead. But such oddities during obedience could easily be put down to simple fatigue.

On the eve of my departure, I wrote a letter to the Order Service, describing Anya's behavior and asking that attention be given to it – in case she needed psychiatric help. In my letter, I emphasized that I had no grounds to speak ill of her and that we were on good terms, and that I was leaving the next day. "Thank you for your concern," the novice replied. After that he visited our kelya and, while I was out, reproached Sveta for the fact that we hadn't told him sooner.

"It was clear he didn't believe you – he thought you were spinning some kind of intrigue," she told me.

Nonetheless, Anya was sent off the island along with us, a few days earlier than her obedience was due to end. We wanted to make sure she got safely with us to St. Petersburg, near which she apparently lived. But at the dock Anya said her goodbyes, telling us she would travel with some other new acquaintances, and by bus, not commuter train.

Do Not Disturb

On February 19, more than two weeks after Natalia Prostakova's disappearance, the LizaAlert search team announced that she had been found dead. The day before, on February 18, volunteers had continued reviewing footage from the cameras placed around the island, hoping once more that the missing woman might have been captured by at least one of them.

"And then we suddenly noticed unusual behavior from a figure in the recording. We supposed it might be her," said Yuliya, one of the search participants. That same day, volunteers went to examine the area that had appeared on camera.

"Darkness was falling fast. We inspected the first small area, then a second. We spotted a trail almost buried in snow. It looked like it could be a human track, but we weren't sure yet. The faint track disappeared under fresh moose prints and their bedding areas. In the dark, even with torches, it was difficult to make out the direction. Nothing to be done here at night. We marked the spot on the GPS and reported to the search chat," wrote Denys, the volunteer in charge on the ground. "Morning. One hour before the transfer to the mainland. The track we found the night before won't let us leave. We push deeper into the forest trying to follow the trail. After a while, Vitaly, call sign 'North,' reports: 'Stop. Found her.' After that, law enforcement was called to the scene."

One of the monks, Father David, told RIA Novosti afterward that Prostakova had had "psychological problems."

"In the last few days before she disappeared, she hadn't been sleeping, as far as I know,” Father David said, “and she had stopped taking the medications that had been prescribed to her." After leaving the island, I submitted a formal press inquiry to the monastery, asking about the case and requesting their perspective, but received no response.

On Valaam, many now explain what happened to Natalia as the work of demonic forces.

"She hadn't slept at all in the last nights, and on the day she disappeared she was actually asking the sisters to tie her to her bed," one of the trudnitsy said. "Father Naum, by the way, took it seriously – he's not someone you get to quickly, but they say he agreed to hear her confession. He came after she had disappeared. That's how the demons play with you! I didn't believe in it before either. But after I'd lived here a year, spent a winter here, and everyone I'd been close to had gone their separate ways, something started happening to me here. None of us thinks it's the demons attacking us. But when you're just lying there unable to sleep, unable to do anything – you're spinning around, caught up in all these terrible thoughts – it's a horrible thing. And after what happened to Natasha, the monastery even introduced a separate obedience specifically for this – to watch over a person who is being attacked by demons, to be with them."

Prostakova's body was found near an abandoned building, not far from the Nikolsky Hermitage – without a jacket, in light clothing. Her mother said there were no signs of a violent death.

Many of the sisters at the monastery said Natalia hanged herself. "She was found kneeling, and had hanged herself from her own bag strap," said one of the trudnitsy who did not see the body herself. "Don't believe anything about her being murdered – the only tracks leading there were hers."

A forensic examination, according to Natalia's mother, found that she had frozen to death. "Unfortunately, it is all very tragic. Not a single person was found in that monastery who could have supported her, talked with her. Or at least called for a doctor. She was sitting frozen in the snow – that is how they found her. A real horror. No trees, no shed nearby," Tatiana said. "I buried her next to her sister, her grandmother and grandfather. In the autumn I will put up a memorial for my Natasha."

Natalia's mother declined to speak with me. She said only: "My dear girl – I don't want to talk about any of it. This is all very hard for me; I still haven't been able to come to terms with it. What there is, is what it is: my daughter died, she froze. I can't say anything more. Please don't – don't disturb us. It is very hard for me."