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MONKS at the historic Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery are vowing to resist their forcible eviction by the Ukrainian government this week.
The monastery, one of the most prominent institutions in Orthodox Christianity, has become a battleground between its monks and the Ukrainian state, which accuses them of loyalty to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko has ordered the forcible eviction of the community this coming Wednesday, a decree abbot Pavlo Lebid has vowed not to comply with.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was subject to the Moscow patriarchate until 2022, and some claim it still is, though it has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It remains the largest church in Ukraine by number of parishes and clergy, though the state has sought to displace it with a new “autocephalous” (an Orthodox term meaning self-governing) Orthodox Church of Ukraine, to which the government wants to hand the monastery over.
