After the service Prime Minister Putin placed a candle before the Saviour Not Made by Human Hand icon, and then toured the Monastery's museum devoted to Alexy II with Patriarch Kirill.

The Prime Minister was shown historical documents and photographs that chronicle the construction of the monastery's cathedrals, and also showed its destruction in Soviet times.

Patriarch Kirill told the Prime Minister how, during the Soviet-Finnish war, the monks tried to save the monastery's treasures by transporting them across the ice from Valaam.

Prime Minister Putin and Patriarch Kirill also visited the monastery's icon production studio, and had tea in the refectory, where the Prime Minister asked that the tea not be diluted with hot water, saying that he preferred proper tea, the way the monks drink it.

Talking with the Prime Minister, Patriarch Kirill recalled the time many years ago when he visited Valaam monastery and participated in the Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Venerable Fathers Enlightened Through Fasting, at the Abbot's Cemetery.