Kyiv approves installation of Mazepa monument near the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra

An expert meeting at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra has approved the installation of a monument to Hetman Ivan Mazepa near the monastery’s main cathedral — the Dormition Cathedral.

This was reported by the Union of Orthodox Journalists.

According to the approved project, the monument is a bronze bust on a granite column 2.5 meters tall. The bronze bust that was presented in December 2025 at an exhibition dedicated to Mazepa at the Lavra has been chosen as the basis for the monument.

After the opening of that exhibition, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the display of a bust of Mazepa on the grounds of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra obscurantism. She recalled the betrayal committed by the hetman and pointed to the cynicism of the Ukrainian authorities in placing the sculpture on the territory of an Orthodox shrine. Zakharova also noted that Mazepa was anathematized by the Russian Orthodox Church for treason against the state.

This is not the first instance of honoring Mazepa at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. In June 2023, representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) held a memorial service for the hetman there.

Ivan Mazepa was a military and political figure of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, hetman of Left-Bank Ukraine, and for a long time one of Peter I’s closest associates. During the Great Northern War, concluding that Peter I was losing, he defected to the side of Swedish King Charles XII. For breaking his oath, Mazepa was subjected to a civil execution with the stripping of his titles and awards. The Russian Orthodox Church anathematized him for violating the oath of loyalty to the Russian tsar sworn on the Gospel, as well as for allowing Swedish soldiers to desecrate Orthodox churches.

The rehabilitation of Mazepa at the state level began long before the current decision. In 2008, Viktor Yushchenko, who was then serving as president of Ukraine, issued a decree on the erection of monuments to the hetman in Kyiv and Poltava, and also stated that he would seek to have the anathema lifted from him. After 2014, streets began to be named after Mazepa; his image appeared on a banknote and a coin with a denomination of 10 hryvnias introduced into circulation in 2020. In August 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky gave the name of Ivan Mazepa to a Ukrainian corvette.