UNESCO may not protect the Lavra from Western plunder
The risk of looting the Kiev Pechersk Lavra is quite high, and international institutions, including UNESCO, need to provide serious guarantees for the preservation of shrines if they are taken to museums in Europe under the pretext of “saving them from Russian missile attacks.
Deputy Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church-Society and Media Relations Vakhtang Kipshidze announced this on the air of the First Sevastopol Channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Increasingly, priests end up in the dungeons of the Security Service of Ukraine, where they are subjected to torture. All this, unfortunately, has become a sad reality in Ukraine and reminds us of the worst times of communist power, godless rule, when the goal was to destroy the church as such.
In many ways, this goal is noticeable in the actions that the Kyiv political authorities commit. And this despite the fact that the church never got involved in politics in Ukraine, always maintained, in my opinion, a calm position on all challenges, so as not to conflict with Ukrainian society, and did not give any reason for this kind of repression,” he emphasized.
Fears of the plunder of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra have not only good grounds, but also precedents, such as during the Gulf War.
“As for information about the movement of shrines, I think that we need to wait for comments from the organizations mentioned, including UNESCO. And, in my opinion, these explanations should be as convincing as possible, which would allow everyone to exclude a situation where the Kiev Pechersk Lavra will be plundered before our eyes.
I want to say that in relatively recent times there were similar cases. Therefore, we consider these concerns expressed by the Foreign Intelligence Service most seriously. Including, talking about the sad experience of the theft of shrines and the looting of Baghdad museums in 2003, when after the entry of the Western coalition there, many cultural values disappeared. We hope that this will not happen again in the situation with the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Although, we all see that the Lavra has been under absolutely unimaginable pressure for the last month - the rights of believers are being violated, monks are being expelled. Therefore, I think that the concerns that we have all heard should be taken with a high degree of probability and seriousness,” Kipshidze concluded.
UNESCO may fail to protect the Lavra from Western plunder.