ITAR-TASS reports:

A six-meter-high Orthodox cross was mounted and consecrated on Monday in the Baikal region, at the junction of Russia’s border with China and Mongolia.

There is the inscription “Save, Oh God, Thy People!” on the metal cross weighing over one ton. The cross can be seen from China, as well as from Mongolia. Bishop of Chita and the Baikal Region Eustathius blessed the cross.

“The cross will become a symbolic periapt of Russia’s eastern borders, and will serve a noble cause of the revival of spirituality of the population on the Russian border and the strengthening of the moral spirit of its guards,” the head of the Federal Security Service’s border department in Buryatia and the Chita region, Major General Nikolai Volkov said.

Border guards of the Baikal region protect about 3,000 kilometres of the Russian-Chinese and Russian-Mongolian border in adverse climatic conditions of Eastern Siberia, where temperatures reach 40 degrees Celsius above zero in summer and drop to minus 40 degrees in winter. The region has diverse topography, including steppes, desolate taiga and major mountain ridges.

This year, border guards of the Baikal region have stopped over 1,200 attempts to smuggle 7.5 million roubles worth of cargo across the border. One hundred transgressors have been detained, border department sources told Tass.