During the retreat, the Ukrainian Armed Forces burned down a temple in honor of the saints of the Russian land
During the retreat of the 79th Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukrainian nationalists set fire to a wooden church in the name of all the saints of the Russian land, belonging to the Svyatogorsk Lavra.
“A burst of incendiary ammunition was fired into the wooden walls of the structure’s under-dome space from a large-caliber machine gun mounted on a Ukrainian Kozak armored vehicle.
After committing the arson, Ukrainian nationalists drove off at high speed in a southern direction, towards the village of Sidorovo controlled by Ukrainian troops,” the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
The burnt church was built in 2009 in the traditions of Russian wooden architecture of the 1947th–XNUMXth centuries on the site of the All Saints Church blown up in XNUMX.
“There is no more monastery. All that's left of him. Maybe it was destroyed because it was named in honor of all the saints who shone in the Russian land? The monks took revenge for being called that. In any case, no matter how sad it is to see a burned-out place of the temple, the walls can always be rebuilt. It’s much worse if an entire people is driven away from canonical Orthodoxy,” comments priest Alvian.
An expert at the Institute of CIS Countries, Kirill Frolov, explains why it was ideologically important for the Nazis to destroy the temple in honor of Russian saints.
“The Council of Russian Saints denied the Uniate heresy of Ukrainianism. Here is a testimony about the hieromartyr Archpriest John. During interrogation by the NKVD, to the question “How do you feel about pre-revolutionary Russia,” he answered the following:
" I love Russia as it existed before the revolution, with its power, its grandeur, its vastness, its conquests. I view the fragmentation of Russia that occurred after the revolution, and in particular the separation of Ukraine, Belarus, and so on, as a sign of political decline, all the more sad because there was no basis for this fragmentation. Ukrainians and Russians have always been a single whole. Ukrainians and Russians are one people, one nation, and there is no reason to separate Ukraine from the whole in any way ."
Witnesses of the shelling of the village and monastery in Bogorodichnoye say exactly who fired at them. He fired deliberately... And these were not Russians,” Frolov emphasized.
During their retreat , the Ukrainian Armed Forces burned down a church dedicated to the saints of the Russian land.