STORY – The intelligence services are increasing searches in the monasteries of Ukraine.
Kiev
A hundred black birds circle above the Lavra of the Caves of kyiv. Their chirping echoes loudly in the distance. A din that always remains less heavy than the silence of men here below. In the snow that stains the holding of their cassocks, priests circulate nervously. They whisper in low voices, in small groups of two or three. Their eyes remain riveted to the ground and only rise to be wary. The atmosphere is tense. This Tuesday morning, the SBU – the Ukrainian secret services – took over the premises. Two weeks earlier, a first raid had already taken place for, according to an SBU spokesperson, “to prevent the use (of the monastery) as a center of the Russian world”. Elsewhere in Ukraine, searches of this kind have multiplied: more than 350 parishes have been searched, and nearly 800 religious interrogated. Today, it is no longer just a monastery, but the entire Ukrainian Orthodox Church that is plagued with suspicion: in…