Ukraine has come under a massive Russian missile and drone attack with waves of explosions echoing through the capital, Kyiv, in the early hours of Monday morning as air raids killed at least five people across the country.
Among targets hit in the sustained wave of strikes were the city’s historic Dormition Cathedral within the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, one of Ukraine’s most significant religiMore...ous sites, as well as residential buildings across the city.
Footage from the Perchersk Lavra, a Unesco world heritage site, showed towering flames licking up towards its domes. Six people were reported injured.
“[T]he roof of one of the holiest places in the Christian world – the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra – is burning,” Metropoliton Epiphanius, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, wrote on X.
Yulia Svyrydenko, the prime minister, posted a picture of the monastery building in flames and wrote: “A brutal assault on our people and our heritage. This is the true face of Russia’s Orthodox values.