If this is a Russian nest of spies, as Ukraine's government is suggesting, there could not be a more magnificent and grandiose place for alleged agents to hide.<\/p>\n
Within the walls of this extraordinary 1,000-year-oldcomplex, which includesa monastery, crypts, chapels and alabyrinth of subterranean caves, a brutal political game is playing out.<\/p>\n
The Pechersk Lavra in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv often referred to simply as the Lavra is at the centre of a bitter political dispute running parallel to the nation's war with Russia.<\/p>\n
The fight over the Lavra reflects deepening tensions across Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Ukraine's church was under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate for three centuries.<\/p>\n
But a schism developedwithin the Ukrainian churchbetween those loyal to Russia and those who wanted to be independent.<\/p>\n
In 2019, they were allowed to split, and the names the churches gave themselves were subtly different but their allegiances are not.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainians refer to their church as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (UOC), whereas the Russian part calls itself the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).<\/p>\n
These factions of the broader Orthodox church co-existed, sometimes uneasily, on this compound.<\/p>\n
But due to the tensions unleashed by the war between Russia and Ukraine, often-subterranean tensions at one of Europe's oldest and most famous churches have broken into the open.<\/p>\n
For years, one of the Russian-linked leaders at the Lavra, the Metropolitan Pavel, has held a prominent position, even though Ukrainian intelligence, in recent times at least, has made allegations against him.<\/p>\n
The country'sintelligence agency, the SBU, insists some members of UOC-MP, including Metropolitan Pavel,have maintained close ties with Moscow.<\/p>\n
Authorities claimhe has glorified Russia's invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
They have now placed the Metropolitan Pavel under house arrest, attaching an electronic tag to his leg.<\/p>\n
\"I haven't done anything. I believe this is a political order,\" the religious leader told reporters after the ruling.<\/p>\n
He also complained that the living conditions at his homewere not fit for him to be under house arrest for 60 days.<\/p>\n
\"There is nothing to sleep on, no heat and no light. There is no kitchen, no spoon. But it's OK, I'll endure it all,\" he said.<\/p>\n
He has also been banned from recording addresses to his followers.<\/p>\n
His arrest follows a raid on the Lavra last year by SBU agentswho said they were investigating reports the site was used \"to hide sabotage and intelligence groups, foreign citizens, [and store]weapons\".<\/p>\n
And last week, Kyiv exchanged a priest accused of collaborating with Russia for 28Ukrainiansoldiers.<\/p>\n
The prisoner swap is a public indication of the value that Russia places on these priests in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\"A lot of priests became collaborators,\" saidAndrii Kovalov, a leading academic on the Lavra who joined the Ukrainian army last year.<\/p>\n
\"They have actively supported the Russian army by informing Russian artillery and aviation.<\/p>\n
\"That's why the [Ukrainian]government has started to act against Russian saboteurs dressed as priests.\"<\/p>\n
While many of these tensions have been below the surface, they are now being spoken about openly.<\/p>\n
\"Russia is our bad daughter,\" Mr Kovalov said.<\/p>\n
\"And now our bad daughter is trying to fight its mother.\"<\/p>\n
Mr Kovalov did his PhD on the relationship between religion and security in Ukraine and has been working as a political and religious analyst since 2010.<\/p>\n
He argued that Russia hadbeen using religion as \"a soft power\" to influence and infiltrate Ukraine.<\/p>\n
That was why Ukraine came to the point, he said, of realising that it needed to have an independent church and hence the recent crackdown against alleged Russian influences.<\/p>\n
The war, he said, hadbeen a catalyst for these tensions coming to the surface.<\/p>\n
\"Before, the Russian church was masked under the cover of the Ukrainian church,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"But the war made the differences very clearand explained to the average Ukrainian who was not interested in politics that the [UOC]is the only legal church which cares about the Ukrainian people and prays for the Ukraine nation and soldiers.\"<\/p>\n
It was obvious, he argued, that there hadbeen people at a senior level of the Lavra who hadbeen supporting Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He said that in a time of war, it was unsustainable for there to be people at the head of a venerable religious institution supporting the invasion of the country in which they were being hosted.<\/p>\n
He stressedthat not all Russian priests at the Lavra were Kremlin sympathisers, but in such a sensitive time of war, one supporteror \"collaborator\" wastoo many.<\/p>\n
He arguedthat when Ukraine was fighting for its existence, no such support could be tolerated.<\/p>\n
\"The Russian Federation [for] thousands of years was trying to absorb Ukraine,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"Russia has stolen our history, our traditions, and Russia never imagined its history and civilisation without Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\"When [Vladimir]Putin says that Russia and Ukraine are the one nation, he's in fact crossing out the right of Ukraine to exist.\"<\/p>\n
Tensions between the Russian and Ukrainian elements of the Orthodox Church have existed for centuries the Lavra itself reflects the two streams of the church.<\/p>\n
Paintings or images of Ukrainian heroes sit nearby a portrait of Metropolitan Pavel.<\/p>\n
\"The Lavra for centuries was like a major historical and religious site for [the] orthodox church in Ukraine,\" Ukraine's Minister for Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko told the ABC.<\/p>\n
\"It's one of the biggest monasteries, which by origin comes fromthe 12th or 11th century its importance from a historical and religious point of view is huge.\"<\/p>\n
Mr Tkachenko said the UOC-MPhadbeen behaving inappropriately during the war including a refusal by some in that branch to recognise the territorial integrity of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He said the accusations against theMetropolitan Pavel were now a matter of the courts.<\/p>\n
\"Each of these cases needs to be proven by the secret service or police,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"There are a lot of cases that are now under investigation,with accusations of collaboration, with accusations of not recognising the territorial integrity of [the] Ukrainian state by representatives of the Russian church.\"<\/p>\n
Mr Tkachenko said photographs of such a senior church figure as the Metropolitan with an electronic tag around his leg would have been confronting to many people.<\/p>\n
But he did not express sympathy for his claims of hardship.<\/p>\n
\"He was, for many years, moving, not with this thing [around his ankle], but in a Mercedes car. So he used to know how to live a lucrative life,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about the view of some Ukrainians that the church hadbecome a nest of spies, Mr Tkachenko said there was evidence of collaboration and misinformation.<\/p>\n
\"Unfortunately during the war, many cases happened where representatives of the [UOC-MP]were directly collaborative with Russian troops, or were provoking their believers and spreading disinformation,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"So as a machine of mass media, the Kremlin is using [the church] asa propagandistic machine tool in the war.\"<\/p>\n
Mr Tkachenko said the question of loyalty within Ukraine's churches was not about freedom of speech and freedom of religion.<\/p>\n
\"This is a question to Russia, not for Ukraine,\" Mr Tkachenko said.<\/p>\n
\"In Ukraine there are a lot of different representatives of religiousorganisations Jewish, Muslim, Protestants, Greek Catholics and so on. It was always a sort of dialogue between them, a sort of consensus onhow to act.\"<\/p>\n
And so while a political battleof sorts rages inside the Lavra, the rest of Ukraine continues its war with Russia.<\/p>\n
\"If you ask ordinary Ukrainians, 95 or 97 per cent of them will respond that they believe this war should be finished as soon as possible, but with only one caveat: victory for Ukraine,\" he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
More:<\/p>\n
How Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine may have turned Kyiv's ancient monastery into a 'nest of spies' - ABC News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If this is a Russian nest of spies, as Ukraine's government is suggesting, there could not be a more magnificent and grandiose place for alleged agents to hide. Within the walls of this extraordinary 1,000-year-oldcomplex, which includesa monastery, crypts, chapels and alabyrinth of subterranean caves, a brutal political game is playing out. The Pechersk Lavra in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv often referred to simply as the Lavra is at the centre of a bitter political dispute running parallel to the nation's war with Russia. Continue reading