Reserve: Unveiling Mazepa's bust marks a new era for Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra

Museum workers unveil a bust of Mazepa in the Lavra. Photo: Kotliarevska's FB page

On December 1, 2025, the director of the Lavra Reserve, Svitlana Kotlyarevska, announced that a bust of Hetman Ivan Mazepa had been installed in one of the rooms. “We are beginning a new era of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra,” Kotliarevska wrote on social media.

She linked the installation of the bust to the anniversary of Ukraine’s independence referendum, seeing a symbolic connection between the two events.

The director added that the Lavra, like the rest of Kyiv, had been undergoing scheduled power outages, and on the day of the unveiling, the electricity came back on earlier than expected. She took this as a “symbolic sign” that “the light of truth always prevails, and we, together with our team and partners, are moving in the right direction.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that in the Lavra’s Refectory Church, the authorities questioned whether Ukrainians are proud of their citizenship.

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