Demolition Ordered of Orthodox chapel near site of first Kievan Rus church
According to Ukrainian Culture and Information Policy Minister Alexander Tkachenko, placing this structure on the museum’s land plot contradicts its designated use and violates the requirements of the Land Code
A Kiev commercial court has ordered the demolition of a chapel of the canonic Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) located in the capital’s downtown area near the site of the Desyatinnaya Church (the Church of the Tithes), the first stone church in Kievan Rus, Ukrainian Culture and Information Policy Minister Alexander Tkachenko said on Wednesday.
“The court decreed to clear an illegally built small-scale church from a section of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine. The museum’s lawsuit has been satisfied. Placing this structure on the museum’s land plot contradicts its designated use and violates the requirements of the Land Code.
The church is located in the buffer zone of UNESCO sites where new construction is forbidden, in addition, it violates the harmony of the Desyatinnaya Church historical archaeological complex,” he wrote on his Facebook page (owned by the US-based corporation Meta, outlawed as an extremist organization in Russia).
History of Desyatinnaya Church
The Desyatinnaya Church was built at the end of the 10th century by the order of Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev who Christianized Kievan Rus. This was the first stone church in Kievan Rus and funds for its upkeep came from a tenth of Vladimir’s income, hence the church’s name. The church was demolished in 1240 during a Tatar invasion.
In the 1630s, a small church was built near the original site to commemorate the lost sanctuary. By the beginning of the 19th century only its ruins were left which were demolished with a new church built in its place which was consecrated in 1842 as the Church of the Tithes of the Dormition of the Virgin. In 1928, during the Soviet rule, this church was destroyed with its ruins cleared in 1936.
Controversy around the church
In 2004, then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma ordered to organize a museum on the territory adjacent to the church’s ruins while the Ministry of Culture together with the committee on construction and architecture were instructed to build a “memorial chapel.” In 2005, Viktor Yushchenko who was the president at that time, instructed to restore the Desyatinnaya Church but a stone church was never erected.
In 2006, not far from the church’s original site, the UOC set up a tabernacle tent with a wooden chapel built on that site in 2007 which was consecrated by Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev who led the UOC at the time. Ukrainian nationalist political forces were hindering the construction, accusing the UOC of intending to begin construction on the site of the ancient church’s foundation, which was a museum item and a protected cultural monument. In 2018, two people were detained near the chapel suspected of attempted arson, when a bottle containing a flammable mixture was found in their possession.
In February 2018, Kiev’s office of Prosecutor-General and the National Museum of History said that they considered the chapel to be an “unlawfully built structure.” In turn, the UOC parishioners appealed to the municipal authorities to preserve the chapel. In November of that year, Kiev’s administrative district court supported the religious community and suspended proceedings on revoking the property rights for this structure.
