The reports concern the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra. On 17 September zaxid.net reported that the Ternopil regional prosecutor’s office is preparing a claim to the Ternopil commercial court following the inventory of the Lavra’s property; the office confirmed this, and its spokeswoman said that several law-enforcement officers are working on the case and materials are still being collected.
According to Vasyl Ilchyshyn, director of the Kremenets-Pochaiv State Historical and Architectural Reserve, who spoke to Hromadske (as retold by zaxid.net and Censor.NET), the outcome of a court case could become grounds for terminating the agreement on the use of the Lavra’s buildings early. As zaxid.net recalls, the buildings were given to the UOC on free lease in 2003 and the agreement was to run until 2052; Censor.NET calls it free use.
Ilchyshyn says the Ministry of Culture’s commission, which the outlets say visited the Lavra several times in 2024, did not find several icons, among them “Angel Giving Communion to Saint Onuphrius” from the early nineteenth century (1807): the monument’s 2014 passport lists it, with a photograph, while representatives of the Lavra said it had never been there.
He also said that walls had been taken down and new passages made in the archbishop’s house and some of the cells, and that repairs of the Dormition Cathedral’s facade were carried out, in his words, without the Ministry of Culture’s approval; a criminal proceeding has been registered over this, he says.
On 18 September the Information and Education Department of the UOC, citing the Lavra’s press service, published its statement disputing the zaxid.net report. The Lavra writes that the mere fact that a commission did not find an object during a specific inventory does not yet establish whether the state transferred it to the Lavra, whom it belonged to and who is responsible for it, and that this must be clarified through transfer deeds and accounting documents.
On the facade, the Lavra writes that the work is linked to the technical condition of individual structures and should be assessed against the technical documentation, and that the registration of a criminal proceeding does not mean that anyone’s guilt has been established.
Sources: zaxid.net, 17 September 2026; Censor.NET, 21 September 2026; Information and Education Department of the UOC, the Lavra’s statement, 18 September 2026.
