For me, it feels normal now. But it is shocking.
In the early hours of a June night, Russian forces unleashed nearly seventy missiles and over six hundred drones upon Ukraine, striking Kyiv with particular ferocity and setting fire to the Pechersk Lavra — a monastery founded in 1051 that has stood for a millennium as the spiritual core of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Five people were killed and dozens wounded, while an Australian-Ukrainian doctoral researcher sheltered in a corridor with her family and watched the flames rise over a site she had spent years studying. The attack was not merely military; it was aimed at a symbol of Ukrainian religious independence from Moscow, a defiance made concrete in 2019 when the monastery began teaching in Ukrainian for the first time. What burns in such moments is not only stone and timber, but the long argument over whether a people's identity is theirs to hold.
- Russia launched one of its largest single-night assaults on Ukraine — approximately 70 missiles and 611 drones — with 60 missiles striking Kyiv alone over four hours.
- The Pechersk Lavra, a UNESCO-protected monastery nearly a thousand years old and the symbolic heart of Ukrainian Orthodox independence, caught fire during the bombardment.
- At least five people were killed and 35 injured; civilians, including an 84-year-old woman stranded on a tenth floor with no working elevator, sheltered in apartment corridors through the night.
- An Australian-Ukrainian researcher who had just submitted her doctoral thesis on the monastery's cultural significance watched the attack unfold from her Kyiv apartment, calling it a deliberate strike on Ukrainian identity.
- Firefighters extinguished the flames and initial reports suggested no structural damage, but world leaders and Ukrainian religious figures condemned the strike as a crime against Christian heritage.
- The attack follows a clear pattern: Russia has long targeted symbols of Ukrainian cultural and religious autonomy, and the monastery's 2019 break from Moscow's ecclesiastical authority made it, in the eyes of those who study it, an inevitable target.
Anastasiya Byesyedina and her mother had nowhere to go when the missiles began falling just after midnight. The metro was too far — running through open streets during a barrage meant almost certain death — so they sheltered in a ground-floor corridor while sixty Russian missiles struck Kyiv over four hours. Her eighty-four-year-old grandmother, stranded on the tenth floor with the elevators dead, spent the night in a different corridor, unable to reach safety. They all survived. Across the city, something far older did not emerge unscathed.
The Pechersk Lavra monastery caught fire in the bombardment. Founded in 1051 and recognised by UNESCO as a world heritage site, it had stood for nearly a thousand years as the spiritual heart of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. At least five people died that night and thirty-five were injured, as Russian forces unleashed roughly seventy missiles and over six hundred drones across Ukraine in a single assault.
Byesyedina, thirty-three, is Australian by residence but Ukrainian by birth. She had returned to Kyiv in 2022 to help her mother and grandmother, and stayed. The monastery was not incidental to her life — it was the subject of her doctoral research at the University of Sydney, a thesis submitted just weeks before the attack. Her degree was to be conferred the Monday after the strike.
The targeting of the Lavra was, in her reading, entirely deliberate. For centuries, Russian priests had taught within its walls in Russian. That changed only in 2019, when the Ecumenical Patriarch granted the Orthodox Church of Ukraine independence from Moscow, and the monastery began teaching in Ukrainian. It became a living symbol of the very thing Putin refuses to concede: that Ukraine is a nation unto itself, with roots in faith and culture that predate and stand apart from Russian civilisation.
Firefighters extinguished the flames within hours, and early reports indicated no structural damage. But the symbolism was unmistakable. President Zelensky called it one of Russia's gravest crimes against Christian culture. Metropolitan Epiphanius condemned what he called a Kremlin assault on history and humanity. Byesyedina's anger was sharp: she was not surprised Russia would do such a thing, only that the world had to watch it happen again — another night of explosions, another morning of counting the dead and the irreplaceable things that had burned.
Anastasiya Byesyedina and her mother had nowhere to go when the missiles started falling just after midnight. The metro tunnels were too far away—running through open streets during a barrage meant almost certain death. So they huddled in a corridor on the first floor of their apartment building while sixty Russian missiles tore into Kyiv over the next four hours. Her eighty-four-year-old grandmother, trapped on the tenth floor with the elevators dead, spent the night in a different corridor, unable to descend the stairs to safety. They all survived. But across the city, something older and more fragile did not.
The Pechersk Lavra monastery caught fire in the bombardment. Founded in 1051, it had stood for nearly a thousand years as the spiritual heart of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, a UNESCO world heritage site, a place so central to the nation's identity that its burning felt like a wound to something deeper than brick and stone. At least five people died in the attacks that night. Thirty-five more were injured. Russian forces had unleashed approximately seventy missiles and six hundred eleven drones across Ukraine in a single assault.
Byesyedina, thirty-three, is Australian by residence but Ukrainian by birth and choice. She had left Kyiv as a child, moved to Sydney with her family, and returned in 2022 to help her mother and grandmother. She stayed for reasons that went beyond family obligation. From her apartment high above the streets, she and her relatives could watch missiles streak across the night sky toward their targets. She had studied the monastery's role in Ukrainian faith and culture as part of her doctoral research at the University of Sydney. Her thesis was submitted in May. Her degree would be conferred the Monday after the attack.
What happened to the Pechersk Lavra was not random destruction. It was, in Byesyedina's reading, a deliberate strike at a symbol. For centuries, Russian priests had taught in Russian within its walls. That changed only in 2019, when the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople granted the Orthodox Church of Ukraine autocephaly—independence from Moscow. The monastery began teaching in Ukrainian. It became a physical embodiment of something Vladimir Putin refuses to acknowledge: that Ukraine is a nation unto itself, not a fragment of a monolithic Russian civilization.
Putin's historical claims run deep. He argues that Kyiv is the ancestral seat of Russian civilization, that the Kyivan Rus nation of the late 800s belongs to his narrative of Russian greatness. The monastery, therefore, is not just a religious site. It is a contested piece of history. It is proof that Ukrainian independence is not new, not imposed from outside, but rooted in centuries of faith and culture. When protesters rose up during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, they found sanctuary in St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery. Religious sites became refuges for a people asserting their right to exist separately from Moscow.
Firefighters extinguished the flames at the Pechersk Lavra in the hours after the strike. Local reports indicated the building sustained no structural damage. But the symbolism was unmistakable. World leaders condemned the attack. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it one of Russia's most serious crimes against Christian culture. Metropolitan Epiphanius, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, wrote on social media of a "Kremlin Antichrist" and "another Russian crime against humanity, against history, against Christianity."
Byesyedina's anger was sharp and clear. "I cannot believe they've done it," she said. Yet she also recognized a terrible logic in it. Russia had spent centuries suppressing Ukrainian religious freedoms. The monastery's defiance—its teaching in Ukrainian, its independence from Moscow, its very existence as a symbol of Ukrainian nationhood—made it a target. The strike was not aberrant. It was entirely expected. What shocked her was not that Russia would do such a thing, but that the world had to watch it happen again, another night of explosions vibrating through her body, another morning of emerging from a corridor to count the dead and the wounded and the irreplaceable things that had burned.
Citas Notables
Russia was launching, consecutively, many ballistic missiles at Kyiv. It's dangerous to run around in the open to get to the underground metro for shelter, so we went to the first level of our apartment building.— Anastasiya Byesyedina
From another perspective, knowing well of Russia's historical suppression of Ukrainian religious freedoms, it's actually entirely expected for them to strike the monastery complex that stands in continued defiance of Russian aggression.— Anastasiya Byesyedina
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did she stay in Kyiv after returning in 2022? It wasn't just family, you said.
She came back to help her mother and grandmother, yes. But staying meant something else—it meant being present for what Ukraine is becoming. She was studying the monastery's role in Ukrainian identity for her PhD. That's not abstract work. That's witnessing.
The monastery being hit while she was sheltering nearby—was that coincidence, or does it feel like something more?
It feels like a message, I think. Russia targeting the one place that most clearly represents Ukrainian independence from Moscow. The monastery only started teaching in Ukrainian in 2019. Before that, Russian priests taught in Russian for centuries. That shift is everything.
So the fire wasn't just destruction. It was an attack on a specific idea.
Exactly. Putin claims Kyiv belongs to Russian civilization. The monastery says otherwise. It says Ukraine has its own faith, its own language, its own history. That's why it mattered enough to strike.
How does she reconcile staying there, knowing another barrage could come any night?
She said it feels normal now. That's the shock of it—the numbness, the shaking, the explosions vibrating through your body, and then you emerge from the corridor and it's just Tuesday. That's everyday life in Kyiv.