The demand for Orthodox monks to leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is a challenge and an insult to both believers and non-believers, it is a desecration of our entire culture, our entire history and our entire memory.
The provocation of power is part of the war of symbols. Just as the robbery of the Baghdad museum in the presence of American soldiers was a premeditated military operation to destroy the historical memory of the Iraqi people (who have much more to remember and to be proud of than the inhabitants of the young United States), thus the attack on the Pechersk Lavra is a blow to the very roots of Russian and Ukrainian unity, a desecration of the faith of millions of people and a gesture of deep contempt for their own history. Above all, it is a gesture of the colonial power’s endless fear of the past and the future, its petty, vengeful and obscene “here and now” of the eternal temporary workers.
