Last night, the enemy struck at the very heart — the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
A shrine nearly a thousand years old. A place where Christianity began in our lands. This is a crime against global heritage and the memory of the entire Christian world. Just think, they are destroying a shrine older than Moscow itself.
And this is done by a state that, while ostentatiously “kissing icons,” targets missiles at monasteries, hospitals, and residential buildings. The next time dictator Putin makes a historical excursion, talking about Orthodoxy — just show him this photo. Today, the world saw the true price of his words.
Thank you to the Air Force, who are now fighting for Ukrainian skies. Thank you to the rescuers who, risking their own lives, are clearing the debris and putting out fires.
The strike on the Lavra demonstrates a simple truth: the Muscovites are not Rus.
True descendants of Rus’ would preserve their cultural and historical heritage. But for them, it’s obviously foreign. For centuries, on the international stage, the nation of orcs pretends to be “descendants of Rus’.”
Putin, not long ago (when the freak was still allowed into European countries) was telling Macron bizarre stories about the “Russian princess Anna Yaroslavna.” The daughter of a Kyiv prince supposedly unites the peoples of France and Moscow. This madman wrote articles claiming that modern Russia originates from the “font of Chersonesus,” because it was in our Korsun, now occupied by Muscovites, where the Kyiv prince Volodymyr was baptized.
Isn’t it the ravings of a madman?
But this nonsense is currently being instilled in the minds of children from various tribes in the territory of the Russian Federation through school textbooks. After this, the Permian people, Bashkirs, Tatars, and even the clearly Mongoloid Buryats grow up believing that they are Orthodox Russians. And then the cognitive dissonance in their minds leads them to think: why then is their Kyiv controlled by some fascist Ukrainians?
The priests of the Kremlin’s cult only need to offer the robbed and destitute natives a solution — to go to a religious war, selling their souls to the devil for 3 kopecks.
But today the swamp savages are directing a targeted strike at the Lavra. Simply out of impotence from not being able to capture Ukraine, they unleash their anger on its most valuable cultural monument, which they supposedly consider their own. Their weak cultural identity cannot withstand competition — all churches in the territory of the Russian Federation are younger, incomparable in historical value to the millennia-old churches of Kyiv or even Chernihiv, and therefore could never effectively unite the Muscovites.
And that’s why the ancestors from the NKVD planted mines and blew up the cultural monument in 1941 when fleeing the Germans and realizing they could no longer possess the Rus’ heritage. Because there were the tombs of all Ukrainian princes since the times of Rus’. The existence of such evidence of the ancient statehood of a people they unsuccessfully tried to incorporate into their rootless tribe as a younger branch was something this ISIS could not reconcile with.
This karmic cycle was actually started by the “first Great Russian” Andrei Bogolyubsky, who began his career by looting the Kyiv shrine, and therefore was branded as a foreigner in Rus’ by the authors of the chronicles of that time.
But Muscovites are not only foreigners on the planet, they are anti-Christians.
And this is important.
Because many Christians around the world are disillusioned with the agenda in their countries and sympathize with Russia, mistakenly believing that the Russian Federation is a “Christian state and it protects the values lost by the West.” Many even in the USA get excited when attempts are made to ban the ROC in Ukraine.
But the Russian Putin Orthodox Church today has not condemned the Russian army for the strike on the Christian shrine. So, even the religious branch of the FSB is an anti-Christian aggressive organization.
They pretend to be Christians, but they must be expelled from everywhere.
For this strike, there must be punishment — a complete ban on the ROC. We need to intensify the process of eradicating this aggressive sect in the world and for us. Every strike will be repaid with the loss of the Kremlin’s influence. And then this process will spread inside the current Russian Federation.
And it will end in Moscow.
In 1941, when the Soviet occupiers retreated from Kyiv and the Nazis advanced, the Muscovites blew up the pearl of Mazepa Baroque and indeed of Ukrainian history – the Assumption Cathedral of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.
Together with the architectural monument, the burial of Konstantin Ostrozky was destroyed. For those far from history: Konstantin Ostrozky – a representative of the Ukrainian nobility, one of the most talented military leaders in Europe of his time, who brilliantly defeated the Muscovites, particularly at the Battle of Orsha. In short, a symbolic figure and national pride.
The photo shows a reconstruction: this is how his tombstone likely looked. If I were creating a National Pantheon that gathered the images and remains of the most significant figures of Ukrainian statehood, he, Prince Konstantin Ostrozky, would represent the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But with the destruction of 1941, the Muscovite devils destroyed the princely remains.
They say all the bones found after clearing the debris are buried somewhere, and hypothetically this “somewhere” can be attempted to be found. Identification via DNA could be organized (since Janusz Ostrozky is buried in Poland), which would be a nice shift of focus in historical relations with Warsaw, but who thinks about that.
In the restored Assumption Cathedral, they are now restoring the place and appearance of Konstantin Ostrozky’s tombstone. And now the Muscovites hit the temple, which, as you understand, is much more than just a Lavra church. For the second time, the modern Nazis are destroying a place that is important for Ukrainian identity.
Now imagine a place in Ukraine where, during the war, the remains/cenotaphs of the nation’s outstanding figures are gathered in one location? Yaroslav Volodymyrovich (the Wise), Konstantin Ostrozky, Petro Sahaidachny, Ivan Mazepa, Symon Petliura, Pavlo Skoropadsky, the same Konovalets, Shukhevych, Melnyk, and Bandera? Or a geolocation of a memorial military cemetery where Oleksandr Udovychenko, Mykhailo Omelyanovych-Pavlenko, Marko Bezruchko, and other outstanding Warriors of Ukraine from different times rest? Or imagine a geolocation of a memorial cemetery where Ukraine is already returning outstanding figures of past science, culture, and politics and where it buries contemporary dignitaries? Imagine that?
What guarantees are there that we can protect the remains of prominent figures in Ukrainian history? For the Muscovite, the goal of this war is to destroy Ukrainian identity, preferably along with all the artifacts on which it is based.
And here is the question in the context of the nighttime shelling. How reasonable is it to push for the return of prominent Ukrainians until the war is paused? Perhaps it is better to spend the wartime on the full range of preparatory actions? To openly and transparently discuss the optimal format of memorial sites, consider the placement of memorial structures, conduct discussions among experts regarding the meaningful content of complexes, and organize and conduct architectural and sculptural complexes… in short, to engage in quite complex preparatory work.
Yes, it may not yield significant electoral gains in evening speeches… Yes, you may not be the one to cut the ribbon at the grand opening (the final stage); it may be someone who comes after you… But what is more important in the matters of memorialization and restoration of identity: a quick situational hype for the current political agenda or a slow but fundamental progress for the nation?
In fact, the answer to this question distinguishes a random populist on the throne from a statesman. It’s the difference between “pretending” and “being.”
With colleagues from European Solidarity, we visited the Lavra and the Mystetskyi Arsenal, thanking the rescuers who have been dismantling the roof of the Assumption Cathedral and the Arsenal building since night. We spoke with the leadership of these institutions; we must unite efforts to protect national shrines, restore them, and hold the Russian Federation accountable.
We urge the MFA and Zelensky to initiate the immediate convening of the UN Security Council. We consider the barbaric attacks on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the Mystetskyi Arsenal, the Dovzhenko Film Studio, the Art Museum in Kharkiv, the Organ Hall in Odesa as targeted attacks by the Russian Federation on cultural objects, the destruction of Ukrainian national identity, and genocidal practices against Ukraine and our people.
We call on UNESCO to react strongly to this vandalism and terror, to protect World Heritage. We are initiating a review of this barbarism at the summer sessions of PACE and OSCE PA.
Russia must be punished.
We appeal to the Ukrainian authorities to mobilize all efforts and resources to strengthen air defense, purchase missiles for Patriot. We call on the VR leadership to convene a parliamentary session immediately, without waiting for June 30! This week! Return 40 billion to the Ministry of Defense, directing them to purchase air defense systems! Consider the expenditures of the Reserve Fund, get comprehensive information on where the funds from the fund have gone. The funds should go to the needs of the Armed Forces and the restoration of infrastructure, protection of cultural values. We expect a meeting of the faction with the Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy; we want to know information about the evacuation and preservation of cultural values.
“EU” initiates an immediate plenary session of the VR with the following agenda: funds for air defense, Reserve Fund expenditures, inter-parliamentary diplomacy, and Russia’s accountability. Terrorists must be punished.
We thank the rescuers and the Armed Forces who work 24/7.
Here I go to work daily, meet for coffee, just walk past walls that have witnessed more Ukrainian history than Russia can endure without frenzy.
This is my Kyiv. It is a thousand years old. It has seen khans, tsars, general secretaries, “liberators,” occupiers, commissars, Chekists, and all those who came here believing history could be rewritten by fire.
Today, they tried to do it again.
I have no illusions about the “accidental” strikes on the Lavra, the Arsenal Museum, the Dovzhenko Film Studio, the House of Organ and Chamber Music in Dnipro, the Art Gallery in Kharkiv.
These are not fragments. This is the essence of this war.
In recent days, Russian propagandists have hysterically reacted to a Ukrainian drone hitting their “sacred place” — the “Defense of Sevastopol” panorama museum in occupied Ukrainian Crimea. And here is their response: an attack on Ukrainian memory. At first glance, a primitive “response.” But this is the only possible imperial logic.
Because this whole war is not just about territories. It is an attempt to destroy Ukrainian memory, history, cultural code, the very possibility of Ukraine being a separate civilizational history.
That’s why it hurts us so much today.
Because the barbarians — and the Russians in this war act precisely as barbarians — want to burn not just a roof, a wall, or a hall. They want to burn the proof. The proof that we are not a “younger brother,” not a periphery, not an accidental political mistake of the XX century by their Lenin.
We are an ancient European nation. With deep roots, with our own culture, our own art, our own memory, our own Kyiv, which was a city when the future empire was still learning to articulate the word “state” in the swamps.
Once philosophers and historians — from Spengler to Toynbee — wrote that the great conflicts of the future could grow from religious and cultural divides. The Russian war against Ukraine has shown even a more terrible thing: hatred can be just as fierce between those who formally belong to the same religious tradition if one side cannot bear the very existence of the other.
For Russia, Ukraine is not just a neighbor. Ukraine is a mirror reflecting how empty Russian imperial mythology is. How impoverished it is without foreign cities, foreign temples, foreign artists, foreign victories, and foreign history.
Russia is unable to build a future, so it constantly tries to steal the past. Unable to develop, it expands through conquests despite the sacrifices. Unable to convince, it tries to make rockets arguments.
And that is why they strike at the Lavra, museums, theaters, film studios, and galleries. Because culture is a territory that cannot be occupied as long as people capable of remembering are alive.
They can pierce the roof, but they cannot pierce a thousand years of our history. They can set walls on fire, but they cannot burn a city that has long become the nervous system of the nation.
Kyiv is in smoke again. But Kyiv will stand.
And perhaps this proves the most important thing: empires burn from their own hatred. And nations survive thanks to memory.
Russia shoots at Ukrainian culture not because it is weak, but because Ukrainian culture is stronger than their entire imperial lie.
We must move into our future with this understanding, especially after such terrible nights as tonight. Because this is the foundation on which a completely different Ukraine can be built, one that will always be looked upon with respect and admiration in the world.
How long does a person live in this world? Let’s say a hundred years. Can you, for example, remember people who died two hundred years ago? Or even a hundred?
* * *
All the Stalin-era buildings, Khrushchev-era buildings, panel buildings, and modern new constructions, all these shopping centers, cinemas, and private estates will last another two hundred years. At most. And then they will turn into a pile of rubble, broken bricks, and shattered reinforced concrete. And the dust will be scattered by the wind across the earth, leaving no trace.
* * *
Since the year the Lavra was built, people and buildings have disappeared dozens of times: a thousand years, imagine that. Yet it stands, and everything that has happened to it can be touched by hand.
* * *
And these aggressive, scandalous idiots hit the Lavra with drones. They won’t destroy it, that’s one. Military sense – zero, that’s two. Terror as such – also a miss, that’s three. So what have these hopeless fools achieved? Ha, they’ve inscribed themselves in the history of something that stood for a thousand years and will stand for another thousand. And they’ve inscribed themselves not as liberators, and not even as conquerors, but precisely as stupid aggressive idiots.
* * *
To comment here would only spoil the overall impression. Words are unnecessary when there are such actions. They’d better have hit Voronezh, it would be less shameful. In other words, these devils have truly lost it, and the head doesn’t understand what the hands are doing, and they’re not even calculating the general, broad-stroked consequences anymore.
* * *
In other words, grandpa is done. Hysteria and insanity, and this is, in principle, a good sign. But he’ll still drink blood, as always happens with the insane on the throne, just remember old Adi.
On the night of June 15, Russia launched a massive strike on Kyiv, damaging the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra – a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a history of nearly 1000 years. The attack was condemned by dozens of world leaders, religious figures, and international organizations: they call for increased pressure on Russia and continued support for Ukraine, especially on its path to European integration.
A drone hit the main temple of the monastery – the Assumption Cathedral, the burial place of Kyiv princes, built in 1073–1078. It survived the earthquake of 1230, the Mongol invasion of 1240, the fire of 1718. It was almost completely destroyed during World War II and restored in 2000.
During the night attack, fires burned in almost all districts of Kyiv, and emergency rescue services operated at about 50 locations. Among the damaged sites are dozens of residential buildings, the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the largest Nova Poshta terminal in the capital, museums, and other cultural and administrative buildings. In the capital, five people were killed in the Obolonskyi, Holosiivskyi, and Solomianskyi districts. Dozens were injured. At least 26 residential buildings were damaged.
