Circe

Russia sent a Shahed drone into central Lviv on 24 March, setting the Bernardine Church and Monastery, a 17th-century monastery, on fire. The Bernardine Church and Monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is also listed on the International Register of Cultural Properties under Enhanced Protection. Italian architects began building the church in 1600. A German craftsman from Wrocław finished it in 1630. The Baroque frescoes inside date to 1738. Today it belongs to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church—in communion with Rome, not Moscow. Beneath the monastery square, 10 Jews survived the Holocaust—among the 21 who descended into Lviv’s sewers in 1943 to escape the ghetto’s liquidation, enduring fourteen months underground. Among them was seven-year-old Krystyna Chiger, who later wrote a memoir about hearing church services conducted above her head while she hid in the dark. In 2021, Lviv diggers finally located the chamber in which many Jews took refuge. The objects were still there: broken glass stuffed into wall cracks to keep rats from the food and nails driven into stone for hanging bags, among other items. The Bernardine Church's bell tower carries its own quiet memorial: the clock there runs permanently five minutes fast, a tribute to a monk who once spotted enemy forces from the tower, moved the clock forward to trigger the city gates closing, and saved Lviv. In addition to damaging the Bernardine church, the Russian drone struck meters from the Lviv regional children's library and the monument to Danylo Halytsky, who founded Lviv in 1256. Witnesses described residents sprinting past the statue as smoke rose over Soborna Square. Zelensky commented on the attack: "Iranian 'Shaheds,' modernized by Russia, are striking a church in Lviv—this is an absolute perversion. Only someone like Putin could find this appealing." Russia damaged Kyiv's Pechersk Lavra in January and struck St. Sophia Cathedral in June 2025. More than 600 Ukrainian churches have been hit since 2022. This monastery and the square beneath it sheltered Jewish lives during a genocide. It was built by Italians and Germans, and has been Greek Catholic for decades. Russia, in its bid to spread the "Russian world," has put the church in its crosshairs.