On 5 March 2025 the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications, by order No. 214, created a commission to inspect the relics of the venerable fathers of the Caves. By 30 May 2025 it was to establish whether the remains of the saints are present in the tombs of the Near and Far Caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve and to determine their historical and scientific value. This is the part of the complex where the Kyiv Holy Dormition Caves Lavra also stands.
Should the commission find objects falling under the definition of cultural property in the meaning of the Law of Ukraine “On the export, import and return of cultural property”, the order requires that lists of them be drawn up and attached to its report. Information about the commission’s work and its results was classified by the ministry as restricted.
No results of the commission’s work have been published, and we found no report of its conclusions. Nor did we find the text of the order itself on the ministry’s website: its contents are known from two mutually independent reports, one ecclesiastical and one secular, which cite that site and agree with each other.
Sources: Information and Education Department of the UOC, 6 March 2025; Religious Information Service of Ukraine, 7 March 2025.
