By far and away, the worst effect of war is the toll of casualties and fatalities. The last four and half years have been unbearable for Ukraine on that front.
But then there is the accumulative cultural toll, on the landscape, the urban environment, the historical inheritance. Iconic places and viewpoints, beloved and relished, are damaged, ruined or utterly destroyed.
So yesterday’s news about the bombing of Kyiv’s Uspenski Cathedral, which lies at the heart of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery complex is devastating. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and so its targeting itself constitutes a war crime. Its ancient roots go back to the very arrival of Christianity into the region, over a 1000 years ago. In 2023, UNESCO actually added it to the World Heritage in Danger list “due to the threat of destruction the Russian offensive poses.”
I’ve no doubt that, like Notre Dame in Paris, there will be restoration and repair. But how absurd to imagine that targeting a place like this might undermine Ukrainian morale. It will surely achieve the precise opposite. But how pointless and unwarranted! All in the name of Putin’s holy war (yes, he has couched it in precisely those terms) against European Nazism, Secularism and Anti-Christianity.
I’ve been looking through photos from when I visited it a decade ago with my good friends Sergiy & Irina.
I’ve never forgotten one aspect of that visit. We were in one of the complex’s grandest halls (see below). And Sergiy remembers coming on a school trip during Soviet times. But this hall had been converted into a Museum of Atheism. Well, of course. What else would you do in this kaleidoscope of ancient faith? How the propaganda posters of Gagarin declaring the absence of God when he reached space and the venality of the priests must have clashed with the glories of these ancient frescoes.
Here are a few classics to give an idea.
And so yet again, a place that’s so precious to a Ukrainian identity that’s battling to survive under the jackboot of Muscovite hegemony.
Just a few more pics, this time of the amazing passageways and tunnels to the underground cells from which some mediaeval monastics would be confined for life.
