Protection of the Mother of God male skete

The Protection of the Mother of God male skete stands in the village of Kostryno, in the Velykobereznianskyi district of the Zakarpattia region, at the wooden church of the Protection of the Mother of God. In the list of monasteries of the Mukachevo eparchy the house appears as the Protection of the Mother of God skete¹, while the house's own site calls it a skete of the Protection of the Mother of God monastery of the village of Rakoshyno².

The wooden church at which the community lives is a monument of architecture of national significance. The ministerial list of cultural heritage monuments of national significance of the Zakarpattia region dates it to 1761, gives it the protection number 070018 and records that it was entered into the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of 23 May 2018 No. 396³.

The regional register of the sacral architecture of Zakarpattia describes the church as an example of Boiko carpentry with features of the Lemko style: it was moved to the village of Kostryno in 1703 from the village of Sianky in the Lviv region, and in 1761 a framed bell tower was raised over the narthex, which brought the building closer to the Lemko type. The church has three log frames, is built of spruce beams, and its roofs and walls are covered with shingle; carving of the eighteenth century has survived⁴.

The Mukachevo eparchy in its own reports dates the church complex to 1645⁵.

There is testimony about the church from the soviet period as well: the biography of Archimandrite Dorimedont (Andrishko), compiled by the eparchy from an archival certificate, records that from 18 May 1968 he was rector of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Liuta of the Velykobereznianskyi district, with the right to serve in the church of the Protection of the Mother of God of the village of Kostryno⁶.

The register names as the owner of the monument the religious community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God of the village of Kostryno, registered by a decision of the regional executive committee of 19 September 1991⁴.

On 13 July 2006 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having considered the reports of the Archbishop of Lviv and Halych and of the Bishop of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod, by journal No. 35 blessed the opening of the Protection of the Mother of God men's monastery in the village of Kostryno of the Velykobereznianskyi district of the Zakarpattia region⁷.

In 2014 monastery buildings were put up beside the church⁴.

On 17 June 2014 the Archbishop of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod performed a monastic tonsure at the house: the novice Heorhii was tonsured into the mantle with the name Yevlohii, in honour of Saint Eulogius, Archbishop of Alexandria⁸. On 3 January 2016 the same brother of the Kostryno monastery, the monk Yevlohii, was ordained by the bishop to the rank of hierodeacon⁹, and on 21 February of the same year to the rank of hieromonk¹⁰.

On 25 November 2017 an annual commemoration of Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, was begun at the house: after the service the hierarch announced that a particle of the saint's relics would be brought here every year on 25 November¹¹.

According to the eparchy, this particle of the relics has been kept since 2011 in the Mukachevo cathedral of the Pochaiv Icon of the Mother of God, and on that occasion it was taken outside the cathedral for the first time⁵. Since then services on 25 November were held at the house in 2018, 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025^{12, 13, 14, 15, 16}.

Among the venerated things of the house the skete's own site names a revered copy of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God¹⁷.

On the evening of 10 December 2025 a fire broke out at the house. According to the State Emergency Service in the Zakarpattia region, the report reached the rescuers at 19:29, the flames were first seen by clergy who lived nearby, and there was nobody in the building that caught fire¹⁸.

The seat of the fire was the brothers' block, a single-storey wooden building with a mansard floor. The rescuers noted that there was no threat to the adjacent monument of architecture, the church of the Protection of the Mother of God; volunteer firefighters from the village of Volosianka joined the extinguishing. The fire, which covered an area of 17 square metres, was put out within two and a half hours, and the brothers' block was completely destroyed¹⁸.