Korsun Icon of the Mother of God female skete

The female skete in honour of the Korsun Icon of the Mother of God stands on the Sapun-gora massif in the Balaklav district of Sevastopol, in Crimea^{1, 3}.

Before 2009 the community on this site was known as the St George skete of the Toplovskiy convent, and the skete's church was dedicated to the Korsun Icon of the Mother of God^{3, 5, 6}. The diocesan chronicle placed the skete on the grounds of the "Diorama" on Sapun-gora^{3, 5, 6}.

On the age of the house the same chronicle records the words of the abbess of the Toplovskiy convent: greeting the sisters of the skete in 2011, she said that the house was already thirteen years old, and the following year she repeated the same greeting, saying fourteen^{5, 6}. Both statements place the beginning of the skete in 1998^{5, 6}.

On 23 August 2008 fire came up to the buildings of the skete from three sides: the sisters' block began to smoulder and the plastic drainpipes on the church melted^{5, 6}. The novices went out with the icon of the Unburnt Bush in procession around the church; by the chronicle's account the flames stopped at the temporary walls of the house and spread neither to the neighbouring stretches of woodland nor to the houses of the dacha settlement, and the fire engines arrived in time^{5, 6}.

On 24 November 2009 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of His Grace Lazar, Metropolitan of Simferopol and Crimea, blessed the opening of a female monastery in honour of the Korsun Icon of the Mother of God in the Balaklav district of Sevastopol, on the "Sapun-Gora" massif; the decision was entered as journal No. 68 of that session^{1, 2, 7}.

On the same day, by journal No. 67, the Synod also blessed the opening of a male monastery in honour of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke in the village of Laky in the Bakhchysarai district¹. The diocesan press service published the two decisions together, as the opening of two new houses in Crimea².

On 11 and 12 September 2010 members of the Sevastopol Orthodox youth association, which had taken the house into its care, worked at the skete: they unloaded and stacked building material for a stone wall around the skete and cleared away rubbish left by earlier building work⁴.