Ukraine’s security service said on Wednesday it had seized “pro-Russian literature” and cash and interrogated dozens in raids on several Orthodox monasteries that sparked a backlash from the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said Tuesday it had raided sites including the 11th-century Pechersk Lavra Monastery in the capital Kyiv, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, over suspected links to Russian agents.
It is also the seat of a branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was previously under Moscow’s jurisdiction but severed ties after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
After searching more than 350 church facilities, the SBU said Wednesday it found “pro-Russian literature used in seminaries and parish schools, including for propaganda of the ‘Russian world’.”
This terminology was used to promote Russian political influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine with claims to protect Russian speakers there.
The SBU also said it seized “more than two million Ukrainian hryvnia ($55,000), more than $100,000 and several thousand Russian rubles.”
Its statement said that 850 people, including Russian and Ukrainian citizens, were screened and that “more than 50 underwent in-depth counterintelligence interviews.”
“Some of them presented Soviet-era passports and military ID cards, or had no original documents at all, only copies of them, or had Ukrainian passports with evidence of forgery or damage. Incoming checks are in progress,” the SBU said in its statement.
The SBU also searched two monasteries and the local diocese in the Rivne region of north-western Ukraine.
A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church called the coordinated raids an “act of intimidation” against Ukrainian believers.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, denounced the raids as the latest chapter in Kiev’s “war” against the Russian Church.
Russia lost many Ukrainian communities in 2019 when a historic schism fueled by the Kremlin’s land-grabbing of Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine led to the creation of the Kyiv Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church.
