Can a monk be killed for giving the "wrong" response to "Glory to Ukraine"?
A monk of the Sviatohirsk Lavra was killed for refusing to place the nation above God. A conversation about a choice that every Christian may have to make.
On August 23, 2026, a group of unidentified individuals attacked members of the monastic community on the grounds of the Sviatohirsk Lavra. Monk Varsonofiy (Turiansky) was killed. A monk named Gregory, who suffered a penetrating knife wound to the lung, nevertheless managed to make his way down to the monastic brothers’ quarters and call for help. Andriy Kyriienko, who lived at the monastery, was taken to hospital in serious condition. Criminal proceedings have been opened in connection with the incident. The investigation is still ongoing, and the identities of those responsible have not yet been officially established.
Further details emerged two days later, when Andriy was able to speak. According to his account, he was sitting alone on the upper terrace near the church when three men in full combat gear approached him. They were not the regular military personnel who had been stationed up there, but, as it seemed to him, members of some kind of special forces unit. One of them said, “Glory to UKraine!” Andriy remained silent. The demand was repeated, and he then gave the kind of response that many Orthodox Christians would give: “Glory to our Lord God. Save and protect.” After that, they began beating him, first with a wooden beam from the railing, and when he tried to hold on to it, they used a knife.
For about forty minutes, he lay in a ravine, losing consciousness, while hearing gunshots somewhere above. The brethren found Monk Varsonofiy lying in a pool of blood on the platform of the Cyril and Methodius Stairway. According to the Lavra, his last words were: “Glory to the Lord Jesus Christ!.. I am a monk.”
The investigation should establish who was responsible. But there is an aspect of what happened that does not depend on the outcome of the investigation, and it needs to be addressed now. A living person was forced to choose between glorifying the nation and glorifying God. He chose the latter. And he paid for it.
"What stopped them from giving the right response?"
No sooner had the first reports about the tragedy at the Sviatohirsk Lavra appeared than a question arose online — monstrous in essence, yet deserving a serious answer: what, exactly, stopped the monks from responding "as required"? Had he said "Glory to the heroes," he would have remained unharmed.
And this question, only in a different wording, has already been put to Christians before.
In the Roman Empire, followers of Christ were not required to renounce their God, to blaspheme, or to sign any doctrinal formulas. They were merely asked to cast a pinch of incense onto the altar before an image of the emperor. That is, to perform an ordinary civic gesture that all inhabitants of the Roman Empire performed, without investing it with any sacred meaning. It was, as one might say today, an expression of patriotism toward the state. Christians refused, and Roman officials genuinely could not understand where such stubbornness came from. Why would anyone find it easier to die than to do what any "normal" person does?
Those who today ask what stopped the monks from giving the "right" response to "Glory to Ukraine" are, in essence, repeating that same "Roman" question.
The early Christians were not enemies of the state, but they refused to render to the emperor the honors that belong to God alone. In this they followed literally the words of Christ: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve" (Matt. 4:10).
Exactly the same thing is happening today. The monks of the Sviatohirsk Lavra support their country, but they are not prepared to render to it the glory that belongs to God alone.
Andriy Sheptytsky's criterion
The question of where love for one’s people ends and something altogether different begins is by no means a new one for the Church. And perhaps its best formulation was given by a man whom no one could accuse of indifference to patriotism or to Ukraine.
In 1941, Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky wrote about whom a Christian should glorify:
"A manifestation of godlessness is the replacement of the eternal praise of Jesus Christ – by which Christ is glorified: 'Glory to Jesus Christ!' – with the words 'Glory to Ukraine!' Obviously, no Ukrainian can have any objection to the exclamation 'Glory to Ukraine!', but replacing the religious glorification of Christ with these words is a clear tendency to remove Christ and to put the homeland in His place; it is therefore a sign of a clear godless tendency that deceives naive Ukrainian patriots."
Sheptytsky declared that "Ukraine in general cannot exist as an independent state, and still less be a glorious power, without the will of the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Eternal God Jesus Christ."
And here is the question: If we imagine a hypothetical situation in which the attackers in Sviatohirsk had encountered not “Moscow priests” but the ultra-patriotic Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, how would such an encounter have ended for him? Would it have ended the same way it did for Monk Varsonofiy?
Christ with an embroidered towel and a flag
There is one detail in this whole story that would be impossible to make up.
The day after the attack, on August 24, cleric Ivan Rybaruk of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, rector of the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos in the village of Kryvorivnia, recorded a video address in which he described the presence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine as “the presence of the enemy” and explained that this enemy should be fought. He accused the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of promoting the “Russian world” as a form of the heresy of ethnophyletism – the elevation of the nation above faith in God. Let us not examine how far the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is actually removed from the “Russian world.” That is not even the point.
In the video, in which Rybaruk discusses ethnophyletism inside his church, a figurine of Christ can clearly be seen, wrapped in a traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloth, with a Ukrainian flag placed in the Savior’s hand.
So, this is a man denouncing the subordination of the Church to the nation after himself placing a national flag in God’s hand. And yet he sees not the slightest contradiction in this. In the system of coordinates within which this cleric of the OCU lives, ethnophyletism arises only when someone else places their own nation above the Church. But when exactly the same thing is done by one’s own side, there is always some explanation to be found for it. As usual, heresy is discovered exclusively in one’s neighbor.
A question for everyone
For many years we were assured that the two were not mutually exclusive, that one can quite calmly glorify God and glorify the nation, and that there is no choice to be made here simply because there is no contradiction. Now we know: that is not true. A Christian is confronted with a choice: either God or the nation. Either the earthly or the heavenly. And the serviceman who, in Sviatohirsk, demanded that the monastery’s residents give the “correct” response to “Glory to Ukraine” did not create this choice – he merely gave it voice. That choice had taken shape long before him.
Christ said: "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Matt. 10:37). And notice that Christ is speaking of the strongest, most natural, and entirely legitimate of human affections. Moreover, love for one’s parents is not an idol, a passion, or a sin, but a direct commandment of God. Yet even it cannot stand above Him. All the more so, neither a state, a political party, an army, nor a slogan uttered aloud can stand above Him.
The Sviatohirsk Lavra brotherhood did not seek this choice. The monks surely never imagined that it could ever fall to their lot. But the choice came to them on its own – at eleven in the morning, by the walls of the church, without warning. We should ask ourselves now, without delay, what we would say in such a moment. Because, judging by the direction in which all this is moving, we may not have much longer to wait for that question. Perhaps far less time than we think.
