Regina Elsner has visited the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra more than once, which was bombed by the Russian army on the night of Monday, June 15. "This is truly terrible and once again confirms the cruelty of this war. I am concerned by the fact that 800 religious buildings have already been destroyed or seriously damaged since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine," the head of the department of Eastern Christian theology and ecumenical theology at the University of Münster told DW. In this regard, she recalls the damage inflicted on the largest Orthodox church in Odessa - the Transfiguration Cathedral - during Russian missile shelling in July 2023.
The Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is an 11th-century complex included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Previously, it was hit by shelling in January 2026, but then the destruction was not so significant. Now, according to the Ukrainian authorities, as a result of a direct hit by a Russian drone "Geran-2", part of the roof of the Assumption Cathedral was destroyed. The Russian Defense Ministry denies any guilt.
The attack has already been condemned by the governments of France and Germany. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadeful called it "an act of terror worthy of contempt". UNESCO headquarters in Paris condemned the attacks on cultural heritage sites, without explicitly mentioning Russia.
Experts: Attack on one of the symbols of the Ukrainian revival
What could be behind the attack on the world-famous monastery complex? Regina Elsner points to two possible reasons. On the one hand, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra has become a "very strong symbol of independent Ukrainian Orthodoxy", she says, recalling that after the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church removed mention of ties with the Moscow Patriarchate from its statute. The autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), established in 2018, is also present in the cultural and historical reserve. "Here you can see a certain act of revenge" on the part of Moscow, Elsner believes.
Another possible reason, according to her, is Moscow's realization that it will never get this religious heritage back - the Lavra. There is no chance of any real Russian influence being preserved there. "Let's not forget Russia's military strategy of destroying everything they can no longer possess", adds the lecturer from the University of Münster.
A similar assumption was expressed in an interview with DW by Archpriest Andrei Kordochkin, a cleric of the Belgian Archbishopric and the Exarchate of the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Ecumenical Patriarchate). "What we are seeing now is a kind of unprovoked malice - an attitude of the type "if I can't have you, no one else can", he says. Kordochkin openly criticizes Russia's war against Ukraine and the Russian Orthodox Church's support for it.
Will the attack change Russians' attitude towards the war?
Russian President Vladimir Putin describes himself as a believer. During his more than quarter-century rule, he has regularly visited Orthodox churches and has repeatedly declared ceasefires for major Christian holidays since the beginning of the war. But how does this fit with the destruction of churches in Ukraine - especially such an Orthodox shrine as the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra?
"Russia likes to present itself in this war as a defender of Christianity, Christian values and traditions, and so on - a frequently recurring theme in the headlines and news about this war. But each of these attacks shows that this is simply a lie, an instrumentalization of religion and an attempt to justify with religion something that actually has nothing to do with religion. "All this shows how cynically Russia uses the Christian heritage or this rhetoric simply to achieve its own power interests," says Professor Elsner from the University of Münster.
She does not believe that the attack on the Assumption Cathedral can in any way change the attitude of believing Russians towards the war. "No, I'm afraid we should not expect anything now. And the key question here is how much ordinary believers, say in Russia, are aware of this war at all. Because when they visit the official websites of the Moscow Patriarchate, they find nothing about the destruction and victims of this war."
In addition, Elsner recalls that critics of the war in Russia risk ending up in prison. “I will always say that the destruction of human lives is truly dramatic - and all believers in Russia must react to this”, says the university professor from Münster.
According to Ukrainian authorities, five people were killed and at least 25 injured in Kiev alone as a result of shelling on Monday morning.
Author: Roman Goncharenko