Zelensky recalled that the monastery had already been hit this week by Russian bombing “of which four monks were killed and four others were seriously injured.”
A wooden church of a famous orthodox monastery in eastern Ukraine has been destroyed in a new Russian bombing, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today, recalling that four monks had been killed in a previous Russian bombing this week.
“Russian artillery hit the Sviatogirsk Lavra again today in the Donetsk region, one of Ukraine’s main orthodox monasteries,” the president wrote in the Telegram, posting a video of the Hermit’s hermitage on fire.
Zelensky recalled that the monastery had already been hit this week by Russian bombing “of which four monks were killed and four others were seriously injured.”
According to him, the Lavra also hosts 300 civilians, including 60 children, who have taken refuge there to escape the bombing.
The hermitage “was destroyed for the first time during the Soviet era. It was then rebuilt. “And now it has been set on fire by the Russian army,” the president said, calling for Russia, a “barbaric” country, to be expelled from UNESCO.
The Muscovite branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which manages the monastery, had previously said the fire in the hermitage had occurred “after hostilities.”
“There is no immediate information about the victims,” ​​the church, which has severed ties with Russia, said in a statement.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that its units, which are deployed north of Sviatogirsk, “do not fight” in this area and accused the Ukrainian troops of “setting fire” to the monastery.
The Sviatogirsk Dormition Lavra is considered one of the three holiest sites in Ukraine for Orthodox Christians.
Before the war, it was visited by thousands of pilgrims every year.
