On January 5, the Minister of Culture of Ukraine, Oleksandr Tkachenko, announced that the premises of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra were returned to the state – the relevant commission, which had been dealing with the transfer, had completed its work.
In this regard, Russian propaganda and its proxies in Ukraine are increasingly pushing the narrative about the “suppression of the Orthodox believers’ rights in Ukraine”, trying to sow unrest within Ukrainian society and seizing an opportunity to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine at the same time.
To ensure the national security of Ukraine, Kyiv has recently started intense checks of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and other shrines of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), a structure still having ongoing connections to Russia despite the Russian brutal war. Various compromising materials have been found on the premises of UOC (MP) across Ukraine, including Russian passports, anti-Ukrainian propaganda literature, and unregistered weapons.
We have explored how Russian Orthodox Church and the UOC (MP) promote Russian military aggression before – look back at our explainer.