Zakharova announced Kiev's encroachments on the holy sites of the UOC

The Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is deprived by the Kiev regime of even the right to its own shrines. This was announced on April 3 by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.

"With its steps, the Kiev regime demonstrates that <...> the canonical UOC, which has fallen under the ice rink of repression, is deprived even of the right to its own shrines," she said at a briefing.

According to the diplomat, the Ukrainian authorities are "stealing Ukrainians' souls."

Zakharova also quoted American lawyer Robert Amsterdam, who claims that the actions of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky desecrate a place that has been a spiritual center for thousands of years.

"This abuse should not be ignored by the international community. The relics of saints are not museum exhibits, much less an object for experiments or experiments," Zakharova said.

The caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra have been captured in Ukraine. What you need to know

Earlier, on April 2, Bogdan Bezpalko, a political scientist, member of the Council on Interethnic Relations under the President of Russia, deputy director of the Center for Ukrainian and Belarusian Studies at Moscow State University, said in an interview with Izvestia that the closure of access to the caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra was a demonstrative blasphemy on the part of the Ukrainian authorities.

The Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ) announced the beginning of the seizure of the Nearby caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra on March 28. It was noted that police officers entered the closed premises of the monastery. One of the employees of the lavra was spotted on the territory with a saw-"grinder" in his hands. On March 6, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine announced that a special commission would assess the condition and safety of the relics of saints in the Near and Far caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra.

Sergey Zasorin, Deputy Director of the Center for Regional Cooperation at Moscow Pedagogical State University (MPGU), Candidate of Historical Sciences, associate Professor, told Izvestia that the purpose of the raids in the caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra is to pocket priceless relics.

On April 5, at 18:00, the REN TV channel will release a film dedicated to the situation with the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, "Tomb Desecrators: 5 Harbingers of Disaster."