Kyiv monastery set ablaze in night of Russian attacks across Ukraine

A massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv has badly damaged the Dormition Cathedral in the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a Unesco world heritage site and one of Ukraine’s most significant religious and cultural sites.

- Peter Beaumont

Five people were killed in Kyiv, where waves of drones and missiles early yesterday drove residents to underground shelters and heavy explosions echoed throughout the capital. Kyiv’s Oleksandr Dovzhenko national film studio, which houses Ukraine’s largest and oldest costume collection, was also hit.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the cathedral attack as “one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date” and urged G7 leaders meeting in France yesterday to increase pressure on Moscow.

Ukraine’s president said: “It is very important that there be a response from the G7 countries and that this response be decisive and substantive: more pressure on the aggressor and more support for Ukraine’s air defence, especially anti-ballistic capabilities.”

Russia denied targeting the cathedral and claimed it had been hit with a US-made Patriot air defence missile.

Outside the Pechersk Lavra complex yesterday morning a group of state security officers stood over the remains of two Shahed drones at the site, contradicting the Russian claim.

Further along the road, a gilded dome lay in the street where it had been toppled by a drone that had struck the upper floors of the Art Arsenal museum space.

“I only heard one of the two strikes at 4.55am,” said a young priest who volunteers as an army chaplain and declined to give his name. “The explosion was massive and blew open one of our windows,” he added as he tugged at a section of copper roofing. “Everything was shaking.