What? They closed your temple? Don't believe your eyes

Photo: UOJ

Meanwhile, in Kyiv on the same day, the Lavra Church of the Life-Giving Spring was closed and sealed. The temple, by the way, was built in the 1990s entirely by the monastery on the site of an old water pumping station.

In June, the authorities announced that Chernihiv's Transfiguration Cathedral (from which the UOC was expelled in 2023) will now function as a museum. And these are just a couple of recent examples, as they say, ‘off the top of my head’. More and more new photo and video materials of the UOC temples seized by Dumenko’s associates, with the locks hung after the ‘transition’, regularly appear on the web. In our country, churches are not just closed, they are even physically destroyed. It requires a special talent to say after that there are no closed temples in Ukraine and to be proud of this fictitious fact.

Of course, we have already got used to our authorities forming their own ‘church’ reality, which has nothing to do with the truth. And they even have some localised successes in this difficult task.

But history proves that lies and propaganda die immediately when their creators, liars and propagandists (the Soviet God-fighters will not let you lie) leave the scene.

So it will be this time.

Read also

Zelensky's revoked order: What kind of heroes should Ukrainians have?

In recent years, the Ukrainian authorities have sought to present members of the OUN-UPA as heroes for all Ukrainians.

Religious processions banned – gay parades allowed

The authorities “respect rights, freedom, and human dignity” for many: Jews, pop and rock music fans, and now homosexuals. But Orthodox Christians are not among them.

Lavra's Dormition Cathedral and the money

While the construction of the entire cathedral cost approximately $12.5–13 million, more than $11.1 million is now being sought for its restoration. And that is only the “starting” figure.

Strike on the Lavra: what will the consequences be?

No one is saying that a strike on the Lavra, the portion of the Mother of God, is a level of absurdity beyond all limits – that after destroying hundreds of Orthodox churches, the war has now reached the very heart of our Orthodoxy.

Zelensky and the strike on the Lavra: grief for export?

If Russia’s strike on the Dormition Cathedral is, in Zelensky’s words, “barbarism,” then what should we call the Ukrainian authorities’ destruction of UOC churches? Is that not barbarism? Or is that somehow “different”?

How Epifaniy became a successor of the "occupier"

From the OCU's perspective, Bishop Ioann was the living embodiment of the very “spiritual occupation” of Ukraine and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra that they now claim to be heroically fighting against.