Russia Strikes Cultural Landmarks

Thousand-year-old cathedral damaged in attacks on Ukraine that kill at least 11

BY JAMES MARSON

Russian airstrikes on Ukraine sparked a blaze that tore through the roof of the main cathedral at the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, one of the holiest sites in Eastern Orthodoxy, amid an assault Sunday and Monday that led to devastating damage to Ukrainian cultural sites.

Ukrainian political and church leaders decried the Russian missile-and-drone attacks that killed at least 11. Cultural locations across the country were damaged, including an art museum in the eastern city of Kharkiv and film studios in Kyiv that house a collection of 100,000 costumes.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the damage at the monastery “an attack on the Christian community and on the cultural heritage of humanity.”

“It is important that the world does not remain silent in response to this latest act of Russian barbarism,” he said on social media.

The night sky glowed orange and smoke billowed from the Dormition Cathedral in the Monastery of the Caves, also known as the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex. It dates to the 11th century and has been severely damaged in several wars since, including World War II.

The Russian Defense Ministry said, without offering evidence, that the monastery had been hit by an American Patriot missile in the course of an overnight Russian barrage of mis--siles and drones meant to target Ukrainian drone-industry installations in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro. Ukraine’s security services published photographs that it said was debris from a Russian explosive drone.

Russia has launched a series of mass strikes with missiles and drones in recent weeks as Ukraine’s military has largely halted Russian advances on the front lines.

Ukrainian officials said Russia fired 70 missiles and 611 drones at Ukraine since Sunday evening. Ukraine downed 50 missiles and 582 drones, its military said.

In Kharkiv, five people were killed including four rescue workers after Russia carried out a so-called double-tap strike, where an initial attack is followed up by a second aimed at maximizing casualties, Ukrainian officials said.

By midday Monday, firefighters had extinguished the flames at the cathedral. Zelensky visited the Monastery of the Caves, a sprawling religious complex on a hill overlooking the Dnipro River, to survey the damage. Videos and photos posted on his social media showed the president on the cathedral’s roof amid twisted and charred metal and wood.

The monastery has been at the center of Russia’s efforts to maintain its cultural dominance over Ukraine in recent years, as it was long controlled by the Ukrainian arm of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ukraine was granted its independent Orthodox Church in 2019 by Patriarch Bartholomew, Orthodoxy’s foremost leader, in a move denounced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In 2023, a year after Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian government terminated the agreement for the Russian Orthodox Church to use the site. Church services began being held there in Ukrainian.

On Monday, the leader of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epifaniy, called for prayers for the salvation of the cathedral, calling the damage “another Russian crime against humanity, against history, against Christianity.”

Russian strikes damaged the Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv. It dates to the 11th century and has been damaged in several wars. SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR WSJ