KYIV, Ukraine – According to a statement from the church, fighting damaged a 16th-century monastery and cave complex that is a highly respected Orthodox Christian site for believers in both Russia and Ukraine. Russian branches of the Church.
Artillery shells hit a residential building in the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, injuring people who had taken refuge in the monastery before the Russian invasion, the statement said. It was not clear how many people were injured or which side the artillery fired.
“The blast wave damaged the buildings of the monastery, which was home to many brothers and many refugees,” the statement said. “Almost all the windows were broken and church buildings were destroyed to varying degrees.”
Built into a high bank of the Seversky Donets River in eastern Ukraine, the Svyatogorsk Lavra is considered one of the three most sacred places in Ukraine for Orthodox believers. Before the war it attracted thousands of pilgrims a year.
The war in Ukraine is also a conflict over the future of the Orthodox Church in the country. The Russian Church has made no secret of its desire to unite the Ukrainian and Russian Churches and control some of the holiest sites in Orthodoxy in the Slavic world, which are located in Ukraine.
An independent Ukrainian church has been slowly asserting itself since the country’s independence in 1991 and was given formal autonomous status within the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2019.
In Ukraine today, churches and monasteries are divided between the independent Ukrainian Church and a branch loyal to Moscow. The Svyatogorsk Lavra is frequented by believers from both sides of this schism, but is controlled by the church subordinate to the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
If Ukraine triumphs against the Russian invasion, the Church in Moscow will almost certainly be expelled from the country, including from sites such as the Svyatogorsk Lavra. If Russia wins, the Ukrainian Church will probably not survive in Ukraine.
Damage to monasteries or churches can also influence views of the war among believers in Russia, although Russian state media has generally shown little footage of destruction in the war.
