Smoke surrounds the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Monday, one of the oldest and most important Orthodox monasteries.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
International outrage is mounting after one of the most important cathedrals in Orthodox Christianity was damaged early Monday during a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv.
Residents were confronted overnight with a fire on the roof of the Dormition Cathedral, which is part of the city’s historic Pechersk Lavra. The sprawling monastery complex – which has stood since 1051 and is built over catacombs that hold the mummified remains of early Slavic saints – is sacred to Orthodox believers in both Ukraine and Russia.
At least 11 people were killed during the barrage, which lasted nearly five hours and saw Russia launch 70 missiles and 611 drones at the capital and other Ukrainian cities.
Six people were killed in Kyiv and five others in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where rescue workers responding to an earlier attack appear to have been targeted by a follow-up strike. In Russia, three people were killed Sunday in a Ukrainian drone strike on the city of Tula, south of Moscow.
Reuters
Prime Minister Mark Carney said on social media that “Canada strongly condemns Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv, including the strike on the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a sacred site in Ukraine and Eastern Christianity.”
French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said it was as “if Notre-Dame or Saint-Denis had been bombed.”
The Russian assault was preceded by several days of nervous waiting across Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Friday that the country’s intelligence services had detected Russian preparations for a large-scale missile launch.
On Monday Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 50 of the missiles and 582 drones, but the ground shook in Kyiv with the impacts of projectiles that got through the city’s defences.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it did not strike the Lavra and claimed the blaze had been caused by a misfire of one of the U.S.-made Patriot missile defence systems that defend Kyiv. However, Ukraine’s SBU security service posted photographs of parts of a Geran-2 strike drone – a Russian-modified version of the Iranian-designed Shahed drone – that the SBU said had hit the cathedral.
Anna Fedchenko, 41, sits in the yard of her dacha – which was just destroyed by a Russian missile – with her neighbours on the left bank of the Dnieper River in Kyiv on Monday.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
The first air-raid sirens screamed just hours after Mr. Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin held separate calls with U.S. President Donald Trump to wish him a happy birthday and discuss prospects for ending the war.
Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump are expected to meet on the sidelines of the G7 meeting that begins Monday in Evian, France. Mr. Carney is also due to attend. Mr. Zelensky, who is expected to press Mr. Trump to authorize the sale of more Patriot missiles to replenish Ukraine’s nearly exhausted supply, called Monday’s attack the “most serious crime against Christian culture to date.”
It left a blackened hole in the roof of the white-walled edifice. Hours later, the smell of smoke still hung over the Lavra, as construction vehicles worked to clear away debris.
Maksym Ostapenko, the director of the national trust that manages the UNESCO-listed complex, said he and his colleagues arrived at the scene early Monday and immediately rushed into the burning cathedral to save ancient icons and other relics. “There was a lot of smoke, a lot of fire. But it was our job to save these items.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said residential buildings and civilian infrastructure around the city had also been hit during the attack, as were a museum and one of the country’s oldest film studios.
The sprawling monastery complex has stood since 1051.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
On Sadova Street, a muddy, unpaved road on the outskirts of the capital, children played Monday afternoon in a 1.5-metre-deep crater that residents said was created by part of a Russian missile that had been shot out of the sky by air defences. Several nearby homes were badly damaged, and at least two people in the neighbourhood – a mix of small bungalows and modest summer cottages – were taken to hospital.
“Yesterday, we had a dacha here,” said Anna Fedchenko, a 41-year-old manicurist sitting on a stool amid the ruins of her family’s summer home. A Rubik’s cube and a flatscreen TV were visible in the rubble behind her, while an orange sweater and a flowered blouse hung from a nearby tree.
Ms. Fedchenko and her family survived because they spent the night in central Kyiv, where much of the city took shelter in subway stations and underground parking lots. But there are no such shelters anywhere near Sadova Street.
“We just sat in the corridor and covered our heads with our arms,” said Nataliya Stepanenko, a 55-year-old medical worker. “If something had hit our house, we would have been trapped inside.”