©Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS
The United Nations Secretariat needs to be more balanced in how it treats information with regard to the Ukraine issue, otherwise Russia will question its impartiality at a session of the General Assembly’s Committee on Information, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
Earlier, the UN secretary general’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that the Secretariat was unable to comment on the Ukrainian authorities’ demand that monks affiliated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery.
"If you cannot give a comment after the monks made a direct appeal to the international community in several languages, Stephane, then you should probably admit being biased in order not to frame the United Nations because it means either a complete loss of qualifications or that there is a political agenda in place. Regularly saying that you don’t know anything about developments in Ukraine, while your chief visits Kiev on a regular basis (the last trip taking place as recently as March 8), means causing distrust in the UN and its Secretariat," Zakharova pointed out.
On March 10, an eviction notice from the acting director general of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Historical and Cultural Reserve (subordinate to the Ukrainian Culture Ministry) was published on the monastery’s website, stating that monks affiliated with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church must leave the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra by March 29, when the current lease expires.
According to the document, a working group that identified a violation of the lease terms had been created by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s decree. Father Superior of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Metropolitan Pavel said on March 13 that the monks would not comply with the order to leave the monastery.
On March 14, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sent letters to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Bujar Osmani, urging them to demand that Kiev stop its arbitrariness against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Dujarric said in response to a TASS request for comment on Lavrov’s letter that the UN chief believed every country should ensure religious freedom and protect religious sites.
Russia Alerts UN, OSCE to Ukraine's Plan to Evict Monks From Holy Orthodox Christian Site
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has alerted the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to Ukraine's plan to drive monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) out of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most scared Orthodox Christian sites, the Russian ministry said Tuesday.
"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sent letters on March 14 to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Bujar Osmani, in which he drew their attention to blatant violations of human and constitutional rights of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine," the ministry said.
Lavrov urged Guterres and Osmani to "take a principled stand against illegal actions of the Ukrainian regime," demand that Kiev stop repressions against Orthodox Christians and stop it from evicting UOC monks from the holy site.
The National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve ordered the monks of the UOC to leave the site by March 29 after an interdepartmental Ukrainian commission accused the monastery of violating the terms of the agreement on the use of state property. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill called the eviction repressive.
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