Acting Director General of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Reserve Maksym Ostapenko talked about the future plans for the Lavra. According to him, the Reserve intends to become not just a historical and cultural monument but a “powerful cultural bastion in informational and cultural resistance to what Russia is doing.” In particular, he wants to work with people most affected by the hostilities and in need of mental and spiritual recovery.
He spoke about this with Channel 5.
Ostapenko has noted that the Lavra has a unique complex of historical monuments, unique objects of cultural heritage, to which soldiers who had been captured and tortured can be engaged in various ways. They can also chat with priests on the sites where the shrines of the Ukrainian nations are located.
He said that former prisoner of war Yuliya “Tayra” Paievska came to the Lavra along with military chaplains. Together, they seek to develop a pool of ideas for creating a program to help victims of war.
Currently, the possibility of handing over one or more buildings of the Lavra for rehabilitation purposes is being considered.
Separately, Ostapenko said that although there are agents of Russian influence in the Lavra who hate Ukraine, most of the monks are spiritual, cultured people who are willing to work for the revival of the Lavra’s spiritual component.
“Not an economic one, what the Moscow Patriarchate tried to turn it into. Because it was turned into a huge business to sell Russian church goods here, untaxed, at completely dumped electricity rates. That is, all the things that ordinary entrepreneurs had to pay were not paid here. This business was going really well,” Ostapenko said.
He noted that some of the monks had joined the OCU. In addition, some of them not only declare such statements, but also make real efforts to preserve the shrines of the Lavra and help the Ukrainian military.
