Kyiv – (AFP)
Kiev has confirmed that it does not intend to use force to evict a famous monastery in Kiev from the monks of an Orthodox church linked to Moscow, who were warned by the Ukrainian authorities that they must be evacuated by Wednesday.
The Monastery of the Caves, founded in the eleventh century and included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, overlooks the Dnipro River and is home to monks belonging to a branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which until the beginning of the Russian invasion was loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate.
In the aftermath of the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the church to which the monks belong in the monastery announced the severing of its relations with Russia, after the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill, strongly supported the invasion of Ukraine. However, the Ukrainian government believes that this church still practically belongs to Moscow.
Ukrainian authorities have given the monks of the Monastery of the Caves until Wednesday to vacate the monastery, which plays a key role in the history of Orthodoxy in Ukraine and Russia.
But the monks refuse to obey the decision to vacate the monastery.
Oleksich Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, told reporters on Wednesday: “No one will be dragged away by force, there will be no forced evictions. Everything will be done according to the law.”
And the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture announced, in mid-March, the termination of the lease agreement that allows this church to rent part of the monastery for free.
The ministry attributed its decision to “violations (of the laws regulating) the use of state property.”
In turn, a spokesman for the ministry told Agence France-Presse that the procedures for evacuating the monastery “start on Wednesday,” but at the present time no “definite date” has been set for when it will be completed, stressing also that there will be no “forced expulsion.”
On the other hand, the monks insist on challenging the eviction decision.
A spokesman for the church to which the monks belong said: “There is no document that obliges us to leave this monastery today.”