Massive Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukraine over the weekend and into Monday have caused significant damage to multiple cultural sites, including the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a Unesco World Heritage site that is considered a centre of Orthodox monasticism by both the Ukrainian and Russian churches. The adjacent Mystetskyi Arsenal, an 18th-century complex that is now a contemporary art centre, was also hit.
“As a result of the Russian shelling currently underway on the night of June 15, the roof of one of the holiest sites in the Christian world—the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv—is on fire,” Metropolitan Epiphanius, the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said in a statement overnight. The church united Orthodox groups opposed to Moscow and was recognised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2018. On Monday, he told Ukrainian media that the cathedral will be restored and Russia will not succeed in spiritually breaking Ukraine.
Unesco issued a statement citing possible “significant damage to the exterior and interior of the Dormition Cathedral” and reported impact on “adjacent historic structures, including elements of the Lavra’s fortification complex and Ivan Kushnik Tower”.
Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the director general of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex, wrote in a Facebook post that “a large part of the roof of the left wing of the Old Arsenal was seriously affected” by a Shahed drone strike that hit the tower and “exploded on the roof of the Arsenal”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited both the monastery and the museum on Monday to assess damage, wrote on X: “It has been confirmed that two Russian drones deliberately targeted the part of the city where the Lavra and the Mystetskyi Arsenal are located. As of now, 35 people are reported injured in Kyiv. Across the country, 53 people have been wounded, and 11 people are known to have been killed in this massive Russian attack.”
In an earlier post, he described the strike on the Lavra as “Russian barbarism” and “an attack on the Christian community and on the cultural heritage of humanity”. The strikes came hours after US President Donald Trump spoke in separate calls with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Zelensky and said that he wants to help end the war.
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, wrote on her Telegram channel that reports of Russia hitting the Lavra are “fakes”. She claimed, citing a report by Russia’s Ministry of Defence, that the Lavra had been hit by an American Patriot air defence missile supplied to Ukraine.
The 11th-century Dormition Cathedral was almost completely destroyed in 1941 when Nazi forces were retreating from Kyiv, with historical disputes continuing on social media after today’s attack as to whether it was blown up by them or the Soviet authorities as part of scorched earth orders.
Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church has been a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a jurisdiction that is still associated with Moscow, although the church denies ongoing ties, has resisted Ukrainian government orders to fully leave the Lavra. Since the February 2022 full-scale invasion, about 400 UOC churches have been damaged or destroyed, Archbishop Sylvester Stoychev of the UOC wrote in a Facebook post on Monday.
Ukraine’s culture minister Tetyana Berezhna outlined the damage to the cathedral, including its altar, and to the overall complex, which operates as the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra National Preserve with several museums and institutions, and to other cultural sites in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro. In Kyiv, she wrote, the “largest and oldest costume collection of Ukraine was destroyed” at the Dovzhenko Film Studio. The Kharkiv Art Museum in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, was hit on Sunday. Although its most significant works were evacuated in 2022 – the museum is famous for its collection of works by Taras Shevchenko and Ilya Repin, an artist claimed by Russia who has deep roots in the region – news reports showed numerous paintings being carried out after Sunday’s attack.
Last week, Russia accused Ukraine of striking the domed building of the Museum-Reserve of the Heroic Defense and Liberation of Sevastopol in Crimea, which houses the replica of an early-20th-century panorama by French-Russian artist Franz Roubaud that depicted the 1855 Siege of Sevastopol. Most of the original was destroyed when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Crimea. Surviving fragments were evacuated in 1942 and restored. They went on display in Sevastopol last week at an exhibition dedicated to Roubaud’s 170th birthday organised by the museum.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine has recently succeeded in effectively blockading the Black Sea peninsula by cutting off supply lines with drone strikes.
