Even before the turn of the year, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture announced that it would "check" whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) would be allowed to continue using the Pechersk Lavra in Kiev. Now the decision has been made: By March 29, she must vacate the entire site, including the underground cells of the monks. The ministry justified this in a letter published on Friday evening with the "violation of the provisions of the agreement on the use of state property by the monastery". Until Tuesday, the monastery has time to send representatives to a commission that regulates the handover.

Niklas Zimmermann

Editor in politics.

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Thus, the UOK has to leave its spiritual center. With the golden domes visible from a great distance, this also has symbolic value for the church, which still has the most parishes, priests and monasteries in the country. But it has been under considerable pressure since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

Allegation: Sabotage for Russia

Last May, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church declared "full autonomy and independence" from Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who supports Russia's war of aggression and propagates the imperial idea of the "Russian world." But the government in Kiev is not taking the turnaround.

Thus, the letter from the Ministry of Culture to the monastery refers to a decree of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who recently announced the "spiritual independence" of Ukraine. In the autumn, the domestic intelligence service SBU raided hundreds of churches and monasteries, including the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. The accusation was: sabotage for Russia. In particular, a video that showed believers in the cave monastery singing about the "awakening" of "Mother Russia" provoked outrage.

The UOC, on the other hand, sees itself as a victim of religious persecution. In a first reaction to the announced expulsion from the cave monastery, she wrote on Saturday: "The only reason for the expulsion of monks from the Orthodox sanctuary is the whim of officials of the Ministry of Culture, just as during the Soviet regime in the sixties of the last century." Not surprisingly, this narrative also represents the Russian Orthodox Church, which still sees itself as the mother church of the UOC. Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida spoke of the "summit" of a "lawlessness that has been unfolding against millions of believing Ukrainians for years." The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry made a similar statement.

But the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not a monolithic bloc either. Recently, circles that critically view their own church leadership around Metropolitan Onufrij raised their voices. More than 1500 priests and laity signed an appeal by early February, deploring a "lack of clear and consistent statements by the Holy Synod of the UOC" in the face of Russia's war against Ukraine.

This reform-oriented current is also behind overtures with the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OKU), whose founding was promoted in 2018 by then-President Petro Poroshenko. On February 16, lay people and clergy from both churches met in Kiev's St. Sophia Cathedral. They called for the "unification of all Orthodox Ukrainians in a conciliar and local (autocephalous) Ukrainian Orthodox Church, recognized by the entire Orthodox Christian community." Because "deep alienation, mistrust and the creation of an enemy image" among the followers of both churches led to mutual dehumanization, they felt obliged to "start this movement".

But such a liberation strike will probably not succeed so quickly. Serhiy Bortnyk, a participant of the meeting from the ranks of the UOC, wrote on the online platform "Dialogue here" of the hope of small steps towards rapprochement: "We are only a wheel that can set the whole mechanism in motion." The expulsion from the cave monastery was also described as an "unfriendly step towards its own citizens" on "Dialog hier".

It is not the first such step. At the beginning of March, the Ministry of Culture ordered the UOC to leave two monasteries and two cathedrals in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. The authorities also allow the OKU to celebrate a Christmas service on January 7 in a cathedral on the grounds of the Pechersk Lavra.