A wooden church of a famous Orthodox monastery in eastern Ukraine was destroyed in a new Russian bombing, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today, recalling that the previous one had killed four monks there this week, AFP reported.
“Russian artillery strikes the Mount Athos Lavra again today” in the Donetsk region, one of Ukraine’s main Orthodox monasteries, the president wrote in a telegram and published a video of the monastery on fire.
He recalled that the monastery had already been hit this week by Russian bombing, “in which four monks were killed and four others were seriously injured,” BTA reported.
Zelenski said the monastery houses nearly 300 civilians, including 60 children who are hiding there from the bombing.
The monastery “was destroyed for the first time during the Soviet era. Then it was rebuilt. And now it is set on fire by the Russian army,” said the Ukrainian president, calling on UNESCO to exclude Russia for this “barbarism.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its units north of Svetogorsk were not “fighting” in the area and accused Ukrainian forces of “setting fire” to the monastery.
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