St. Nicholas's Convent

St. Nicholas's Convent is a house of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Mykilske in the Volnovakh district of the Donetsk region¹. When the Holy Synod divided the Donetsk Diocese in two on 29 July 1994 and separated the Gorlivka Diocese from it, the Volnovakh district remained part of the Donetsk Diocese².

Mykilske lies on a plain and is divided in two by the river Kashlahach; the village was founded in the 1840s³. Before the revolution it was divided into two settlements - Vasylivka, with the parish church of St. Basil the Great on the southern bank of the river, and Mykilske, with the parish church of St. Nicholas of Myra on the northern bank³.

The stone St. Nicholas's church was built in 1910⁴. In the 1930s the church was closed, and storehouses, workshops and a slaughterhouse were set up in it⁴.

In the priest's house beside that church a house church was arranged in honour of the Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign⁴. It took its name from the Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God venerated in Mykilske, which belongs by its iconography to the type of the Sign⁴.

Both houses at Mykilske were founded by Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur), who died on 29 August 2002⁵. In the world Ivan Oleksiiovych Sokur, he was born on 3 September 1944, and in 1975, as he was finishing his studies at the academy, he received the monastic tonsure with the name Savvatii; in 1980 he was raised to the rank of hegumen⁵.

In the second half of the 1980s the civil authorities secured the transfer of Father Savvatii to Mykilske, which no scheduled passenger transport served⁵. In 1990 he was raised to the rank of archimandrite, and in 1992 he received the schema with the name Zosima⁵.

In 1997 Father Zosima leased from the village council a house standing near St. Basil's church and set up in it an almshouse for fifty people⁵.

Those of his spiritual children who desired the monastic life and had the qualities needed for it formed two communities at Mykilske, one of brothers and one of sisters⁵. The brothers' block was built in 1998 and the sisters' block in 1999; the sisters' community received the status of a monastery in 1998 and the brothers' community in 2001⁵.

On 19 May 1998 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of the Archbishop of Donetsk and Mariupol, by journal No. 27 blessed the opening of a convent in the village of Mykilske in the Volnovakh district of the Donetsk region¹.

On 21 December 2001 the Synod, by journal No. 27, blessed the opening in the same village of a monastery of men in honour of St. Basil the Great⁶.

At Easter 2002 the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the refectory church of All Saints of the Rus Land built onto the sisters' block⁵. The church was opened in that same year of 2002, and a chiming clock was set on its tower⁴.

According to the description placed in 2013 on the website of both houses at Mykilske, the two adjacent monasteries had been built around St. Basil's church in the centre of the southern half of the village, while the St. Nicholas's church in the centre of the northern half was in the charge of St. Nicholas's Convent³.