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Maxym Ostapenko
Дата рождения: 04.08.1971
Director General of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve (Oct 28, 2023 – May 22, 2025)
Полное досье
Maksym Ostapenko
Date of birth: 04.08.1971
Director General of the National Preserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” (October 28, 2023 – May 22, 2025)
Maksym Ostapenko was appointed Director General of the preserve on the territory of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra at the most acute stage of the state campaign to expropriate the monastery.
The official became the de facto executor of unlawful orders to terminate the lease agreement with the monastery and evict the monks.
Ostapenko personally took part in the illegal closure and sealing of Lavra buildings and also distinguished himself by public rhetoric of hatred toward the faithful.
In addition, the official bears personal responsibility for events on the monastery grounds that are offensive to Orthodox Christians.
On April 14, 2023, Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko appointed Maksym Ostapenko as the new acting Director General of the National Preserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra”.
The Minister of Culture and Information Policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko, signed the relevant order.
On April 19, 2023, Ostapenko, on the air of the telethon “United News”, commented on the unlawful entry by his employees into the 39th building of the Lavra.
The official attempted to publicly incite hatred against Orthodox Christians. In particular, he announced that advertisements for Crimean eparchies, Crimean monasteries, and business cards of monks and Church workers from the occupied territories were found in the buildings. He described all this as “traces of the Russian world”, apparently denying Crimea’s belonging to Ukraine.
On July 10, 2023, a commission of the preserve represented by acting director M. Ostapenko and A. Ovchar tried to enter the 57th and 58th buildings of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in order to seal them and change the locks.
However, clergy and faithful did not let the representatives of the Ministry of Culture inside.
The commission was forced to retreat.
One of the Lavra’s lawyers, Volodymyr Lubyanetskyi, in a comment to seminarian Mykhailo Pratsiuk, said that the Ministry of Culture representatives could not seize the buildings without security forces.
“Today, parishioners stood near the buildings 57 and 58 as a human shield, and, accordingly, they did not manage to seize the buildings,” the lawyer said. He linked this to the fact that this time the commission had no special forces with them.
“Nobody knows when there will be the next go-ahead for seizure, and whether forceful methods will be used then,” Lubyanetskyi concluded.
On July 18, 2023, Ostapenko said that the monastery should have been taken under control back in spring 2022 with the involvement of the National Guard.
In addition, the official accused UOC clergy of “agent work for the Russian Federation”.
“It would have been better to start in May of last year, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine had only just pushed the enemy away from the capital,” the official said. “That was when it was necessary, conditionally speaking, to cordon off the territory with the National Guard and check all premises, determine their legal and technical mode of use, and only after that conclude some new agreements. But the state was then already fighting on other fronts – Sumy, Kharkiv region, so much piled up… And some of the Church’s representatives, their agents, who are indeed in constant contact with Russia, spread their wings and began to use the fact that Ukraine is nevertheless a tolerant and law-based state.”
According to Ostapenko, representatives of the UOC, defending the shrine by lawful means, allegedly act “contrary to the interests” of Ukraine.
In the same interview, the official said he expected by the end of 2023 to “take onto the balance sheet” in the Lower Lavra the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves and “cultural heritage objects”.
On August 10, 2023, representatives of the preserve came with police to seal additional buildings of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
At Building 54, where pilgrims and several monks live, the acting head of the preserve, Maksym Ostapenko, and his deputy, Oleksandr Ovchar, approached.
“What are you standing here for? These are our premises,” Ovchar said to the faithful who were reading prayers in front of the building. They replied that the court decision in the dispute between the monastery and the preserve had not entered into force, and therefore Ostapenko and Ovchar had nothing to do there. Pilgrims called them Bolsheviks acting like Russian occupiers. A woman from the preserve’s team tried to break inside, but she was not allowed. The commission left.
On August 10, 2023, Ostapenko, in the comments on his Facebook page, publicly stated the possibility of dispersing the faithful with water from a fire hose.
On August 11, 2023, Ostapenko admitted to discrimination against UOC monks in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
At a media briefing, the official asked for the cameras to be turned off and then told journalists what was really happening.
Ostapenko acknowledged that there are no agreements with either the UOC or the OCU. Accordingly, the OCU’s presence in the Upper Lavra has no legal grounds. However, no one expels them – on the contrary.
Ostapenko said that in order to sign an agreement (with the OCU) or in order not to sign with anyone, it is necessary to “finish the process”, that is, to expel the UOC.
On September 5, 2023, Ostapenko stated that he had taken under control 12 of the Lavra’s 79 objects.
According to Ostapenko, UOC monks can use Lavra premises until the court proceedings between the preserve and the monastery are completed.
On October 28, 2023, the Ministry of Culture approved Maksym Ostapenko for the post of Director General of the National Preserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra”.
On the preserve’s official website, Ostapenko was still referred to as acting Director General, while on the organization’s Facebook page, since October 25, they were already writing about him without the “acting” designation.
On October 28, 2023, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy announced plans to organize an examination to verify the authenticity of the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves.
Ostapenko reported this criminal initiative in an interview with telegraf.com.ua.
In addition, the official distinguished himself by hateful rhetoric toward UOC clergy.
“A few months ago, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy created a commission to check the presence of relics that were once given to the monastery," he said. "But there are suspicions from the public that some of the relics have been either substituted or stolen. To answer this question and put it to rest, the Ministry of Culture, along with specialists from various fields, will conduct an expertise to verify the authenticity of these relics. We want to ensure that there will be no accusations against us that we are keeping the wrong relics or that the relics have been stolen.”
In Ostapenko’s view, “without such expertise, the public's request will remain, given people's distrust of the leader and other representatives of the UOC [Ukrainian Orthodox Church] who have been arrested for collaboration and other criminal matters.”
“The state transferred these relics to the monastery at the time, and now it should fully regain control over them,” the official believes.
(Source: UOJ)
On November 23, 2023, the lawyer of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and its abbot, Archpriest Mykyta Chekman, reported on his Telegram channel that he had applied to the appellate court with a request to recover 100 million hryvnias from the preserve for the de facto expulsion of the monastery from Lavra premises.
The lawyer believes that the court ban on the monastery hindering the work of the commission “effectively leads to the transfer” of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra to the preserve.
“In this regard it is necessary to take measures of counter-security by obliging the plaintiff within seven days from the date of the ruling to deposit to the deposit account of the Commercial Court of Kyiv funds in the amount of 100,000,000 UAH,” the Lavra lawyer’s statement says.
In response, the head of the preserve, Maksym Ostapenko, emotionally called the monastery “rashist agents” on his Facebook page, whose “cynicism” allegedly “has no limits”.
“For decades you use 79 unique structures in the center of the capital for free, receive all possible benefits from the state, pay no taxes, receive tens of millions of hryvnias from the budget of Ukraine per religious community, illegally sublease state property to businesses, hotels, shops selling products of the Moscow church… and then demand 100,000,000 hryvnias from Ukraine!” Ostapenko wrote.
(Source: Ostapenko’s personal Facebook page)
And the preserve itself, on its official Facebook page, accused the monks of allegedly making “superprofits” their “main task” for 30 years.
(Source: The reserve's Facebook page)
In response, the Lavra’s lawyer reminded Ostapenko and his subordinates point by point who and how created the preserve at all, and how the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra arose.
“We want Mr. Ostapenko to recall, firstly: who built the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, who lived and prayed in it? And who took it away from the Church and made a ‘preserve’ there? In addition, Ukraine back in the 1990s assumed obligations to the Council of Europe to carry out restitution (return) to Church ownership of property that was taken by the Soviet totalitarian regime (by the way, that very regime created the ‘preserve’), which, unfortunately, has never been fulfilled.
Secondly: let us conduct an assessment and calculate how much money the Church spent restoring the Shrine, which was transferred for Church use in an almost completely ruined state.
Thirdly: when the court of first instance granted a groundless interim measure not to obstruct the work of the commission for acceptance and transfer of property, thereby effectively satisfying the preserve’s claim before the case even began – is that not cynicism?
And is it not cynicism to call ‘rashist agents’ millions of faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, at whose expense the Lavra was restored, and whom, on Ostapenko’s orders, are not allowed onto Lavra territory to venerate the relics of the Venerable Fathers? Interesting double standards,” the lawyer wrote.
On December 21, 2023, the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra preserve decided to classify documents for which this structure is the custodian “for the duration of martial law if the disclosure of information contained in such documents during the martial law may lead to negative consequences for the Reserve in the matter of supporting national security,” the preserve’s website says.
The order was written by director Maksym Ostapenko “in connection with the potential threat to the centre of spiritual enlightenment of the Ukrainian people.” He did not specify which documents were meant.
Ostapenko complained of “constant systematic massive information attacks from representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate” and said he classified the documents “to maintain public order, to prevent disorder and to avoid threats or crimes, defending solely the interests of national security.”
On January 31, 2024, Ostapenko stated that the introduction of the OCU into the Lavra is an important aspect of preserving the spirituality and historical memory of Ukrainian society.
Ostapenko also noted that the OCU’s presence in the Lavra is “a huge step toward Ukraine’s true independence”.
At the same time, the head of the preserve believes that today the UOC is conducting some kind of “counteroffensive” in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
According to him, when he saw a church calendar in Russian in the Lavra, he understood that “we have ended up in the epicenter of the ‘Russian World’, which must be eradicated first of all in people’s minds.”
Commenting on the possibility of banning the UOC, Ostapenko said the authorities must resolve this issue “hard, once, and show who has the right to raise people.”
“We have hundreds of churches belonging to the UOC. Some of these believers, I am sure, are Ukrainians. Priests too. But we still have a huge number of people who do not believe their eyes. And that is sad. But I hope that enlightenment will come, and it does come, actually,” he added.
On February 25, 2024, Ostapenko stated that he is creating a commission to accept the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves resting in the Near Caves, which he called “cultural values”.
The head of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra preserve, Maksym Ostapenko, in a letter to the monastery, stated that starting February 27 a commission would begin work on the “return of cultural values to have them listed” which “in fact are located in the Near Caves”. This was reported on the Telegram channel of the Lavra’s lawyer, Archpriest Mykyta Chekman.
He said the monastery received such a letter after it refused to facilitate an OCU “service” in the Near Caves on February 24, 2024, in which “Archbishop Agapit of Vyshhorod” of the OCU was supposed to participate. The lawyer attached correspondence between the monastery and the preserve in which the monks explained that such a “service” is impossible for two reasons. The first – the UOC and the OCU are not in Eucharistic communion. The second – repairs are being carried out in the caves by the monastery, which the monks are doing at the request of the preserve itself.
“There is no limit to the cynicism and blatant manipulation of the Reserve representatives and some religious organisations," the lawyer wrote. “First of all, we would like to remind the public that according to the Reserve's Order N 04-07/91 of 10.08.2023, from 7:00 a.m. on 11 August 2023, access to the territory of the Lower Lavra was closed to visitors. Subsequently, the Reserve requests in writing the Monastery to carry out repair work in the caves. The Monastery agrees (despite everything), informs the representatives of the Reserve also in the form of correspondence about it and starts repair works. And then suddenly come representatives of the most patriotic religious organisation in Ukraine (who never manipulate on the sorrow of war), and demand to open the caves, in which repair works are already being carried out (about which they are probably "allegedly" unaware), to accuse of non-admission and obstruction... Coincidence? No, we don't think so!”
On December 13, a 1+1 channel aired an offensive segment filmed on November 29 in the Refectory Church of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
Producer of 1+1 media Akym Halymov together with chef and restaurateur Yevhen Klopotenko prepare food directly inside the church.
They also plan to talk about culinary traditions of different regions of Ukraine, the sacred meaning of Christmas dishes, interesting secrets, and regional differences in their preparation.
It is noted that with this special episode, the authors allegedly “must restore the lost and inspire Ukrainians to love their heritage again.”
“The filming location, the Refectory Church of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, was chosen intentionally. Church records often preserve recipes that are considered lost. Moreover, one of the dishes on the festive table was taken directly from the archives of the national reserve,” 1+1 comments.
Maksym Ostapenko, the preserve’s director, believes this is a wonderful “opportunity to touch living history. Not just to see an artifact or an object, but to witness how it was made, its context, the techniques used, and, ultimately, what it tastes like.”
On May 20, 2025, in an interview with RBC, Ostapenko used hate speech toward the monks of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
He stated that some of the murals in the Dormition Cathedral were allegedly commissioned by Moscow and serve as evidence that the Lavra was being prepared for occupation.
He asserted that "the style of the murals in the St. Andrew Chapel is a 'Russo-Byzantine' trend of the 19th century, typical of cities such as Mozhaisk and Ryazan. It is a style that reinforces the 'Great Russian imperial idea.'"
Ostapenko also criticized the UOC for including on the frescoes of the Dormition Cathedral an image of St. Seraphim of Sarov, whom he described as "the official patron of Russia’s nuclear weapons."
In addition, the director of the reserve claimed that frescoes depicting Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Lavra, among the lineage of past superiors of the monastery throughout its history, were a "personalized attempt to consolidate power."
"According to the plan, after the capture of Kyiv in 2022, it was here that Patriarch Kirill was to serve – 'as a warning to all Mazepians'," Ostapenko said, without clarifying whose plan it was or where he got this information.
On May 21, 2025, the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine dismissed Maksym Ostapenko from the position of Director General of the National Preserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra”.
The corresponding order No. 432-k was signed on May 21, 2025, by Minister Mykola Tochytsky, as Ostapenko reported on his Facebook page..
The document states that the reason for his dismissal was “improper fulfillment of the terms of the contract” dated October 23, 2023. The decision was based on a memo from Volodymyr Shornykov, Director of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
Maksym Ostapenko stated that the news of his dismissal came as a surprise. According to him, there had been no warnings or official complaints regarding his performance:
“While we were preparing a large-scale exhibition in the Lavra, I received news that came as a surprise – I was dismissed from my position as head of the National Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Reserve.”
He also noted that in recent weeks, he had felt pressure and had heard rumors of behind-the-scenes power struggles over control of the Lavra.
“Clearly, someone was made uncomfortable by the fact that we spoke openly about the need to cleanse the Lavra of imperial narratives,” Ostapenko wrote.
On June 3, 2025, Ostapenko assured that he fought with all his might against the UOC’s presence in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and that his dismissal was unjust.
Dismissed from the position of director of the Lavra Reserve, Maksym Ostapenko, in an interview with "Babel", expressed outrage at Minister Tochytsky's words that he did not fight enough against the UOC. The former director emphasized that during his two years of leadership, more was done in the fight against the UOC "than in the previous thirty".
He credited himself with the fact that instead of the UOC, the OCU now “serves” at the Dormition and Refectory Churches. However, Ostapenko is convinced that the main thing in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is neither the services nor the monastery, but the Ukrainian spirit.
"The Russian imperial narrative is that the Lavra is exclusively a monastery. And the whole world lives with the thought that the Lavra is a monastery of the ROC. For the last two years, we have been doing everything to show that it is a center of Ukrainian and world culture. We wanted to reveal the Ukrainian identity in the Lavra," emphasized the former director of the Lavra Reserve.
On January 15, 2026, after being appointed head of the Lavra Reserve, Maksym Ostapenko, who served as director from 2023 to 2025, declared his readiness to fight the “Russian world” in the Lavra.
"Together, we must do everything possible to win the spiritual confrontation with the 'russian world,' which for centuries has destroyed everything Ukrainian in the Lavra," Ostapenko stated.
Given the context of his words, the official used hate speech against the monks of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.
On February 26, 2026, Ostapenko gave an interview to the "Glavkom" media in which he publicly used hate speech against the believers and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The general director of the reserve accused some of the UOC clergy of "de facto informational and ideological work against the people and the state."
"Part of the Moscow Patriarchate continues to spread the hostile narratives launched by Kirill (the head of the Russian Orthodox Church – "Glavkom"). And in fact, this is informational and ideological work against the state and our people."
The official also expressed interest in terminating the lease agreement with the UOC monks.
"Previously, we didn't control the Lower Lavra. But after the agreement with the UOC MP is completely terminated—which, God forbid, should a court order be issued—the maintenance, repair, and security of this territory will also become our responsibility, which will significantly increase our obligations."
In the same interview, Ostapenko spread blatantly false information about the alleged use of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra by Russian FSB officers.
"I would like to remind you that in 2013, during the Maidan, Russian oligarchs held an 'exhibition' in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Strelkov-Girkin was the head of security there. Anti-Maidan and Russian agents were stationed nearby. FSB officers in cassocks used the Lavra against the Ukrainian people as the center of their special operation. Now we are seeing the consequences of these 'Gifts of the Magi'."
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