The Bizyukiv St. Gregory’s Monastery stands in the village of Chervonyi Maiak in Kherson region. The head of the Kherson regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported that at about 15:00 on 19 September Russians attacked a monastery in the village of Chervonyi Maiak, Novoraisk community, with an FPV drone: one clergyman was killed and four more were wounded.
The press service of the Kherson eparchy, relayed on 20 September 2026 by the Information and Education Department of the UOC, said that Russian forces carried out a series of drone attacks on the monastery on 19 September and that its oldest monk died of severe wounds. The brethren, the eparchy said, set out for a neighbouring village because staying in the monastery had become impossible, and on the way a Russian drone attacked them again: four members of the community were wounded.
According to the eparchy, Metropolitan Ioann of Kherson and Tavria expressed condolences to the brethren and to the relatives of the deceased and called on the faithful to pray for the recovery of the wounded.
On 22 September the police of Kherson region said they had recently evacuated four wounded monks and the body of the deceased clergyman from the Novoraisk community. In the police account, an FPV drone attacked a men’s monastery in Chervonyi Maiak and the wounded managed to reach Novoraisk; officers took them to a medical facility, where, the release says, they are receiving treatment. Ukrinform adds that as of 21 September the condition of the wounded was satisfactory.
The accounts differ: the eparchy writes of a series of attacks and of an attack on the brethren on the road, while the head of the administration and the police write of an FPV drone attack on the monastery; the eparchy calls the deceased the oldest monk of the monastery, the head of the administration and the police a clergyman. Neither the head of the administration nor the police names the monastery; Ukrinform, reporting the police release, quotes the eparchy’s post naming it and itself writes of the wounded from that monastery.
Sources: Information and Education Department of the UOC, 20 September 2026, citing the press service of the Kherson eparchy; ZMINA, 20 September 2026, citing the head of the Kherson regional military administration; Main Directorate of the National Police in Kherson region, 22 September 2026; Ukrinform, 22 September 2026, 16:28, its own report on the Kherson region police release, with the eparchy’s post; the condition of the wounded on 21 September is the agency’s own statement.
