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Reçu — 23 juillet 2026 ⏭
✇Euromaidan Press

“Putin droned Jesus Christ”: Far-right Trump ally who opposed Ukraine aid says she was wrong after visiting Kyiv

Par : Olena Mukhina
23 juillet 2026 à 10:42

Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump at Kyiv's Lavra. Source: Laura Loomer X

An American activist who spent years repeating Russian talking points told her followers she had been wrong about Ukraine. Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump, shared her impressions with hundreds of thousands of followers after visiting the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Dormition Cathedral, damaged by a Russian drone strike. 

The visit is the public face of a documented reversal. Loomer long echoed Kremlin narratives and criticized US aid to Ukraine, and after a fact-finding trip to Kyiv in July 2026, she acknowledged she had been "propagandized by Russian media."

"I was living in a media echo chamber, and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself," she wrote.

The Lavra tour, alongside senior Ukrainian officials, was the culmination of that trip, which also took her to the mass graves in Bucha and through Russian strikes on the capital.

"Putin droned Jesus Christ. The Woke Reich and Russia don't want you to see this video..." Loomer wrote on X, attaching a four-minute clip recorded inside the Lavra's main cathedral.

Ukrainian officials welcomed visit

Loomer toured the Lavra with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berehna and First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia.

The National Reserve said she was shown the Tower of St. John the Recluse, the Mystetskyi Arsenal building, and the Dormition Cathedral, all of which were damaged in the 15 June Russian attack, and was briefed on the restoration.

"It was interesting to sit down and talk to LauraLoomer and then to go to Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Wednesday," Kyslytsia wrote, thanking Loomer for "taking the initiative and traveling to Ukraine at this time."

Berehna framed it as a matter of witness.

"Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage while Ukrainians simply want to live, create, raise children, and build our future. Thank you, Laura, for visiting Ukraine," she said.

Dormition Cathedral lost most of its roof

The site Loomer filmed carries a specific loss. The Dormition Cathedral lost more than 80% of its roof in the Russian attack, and over a dozen sites across the National Reserve were damaged.

The cathedral is not incidental to the war on heritage. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, founded in 1051.

A Russian strike damaging it is the kind of event Ukraine has documented across its cultural landscape: nearly 2,000 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since 2022, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.

Russia's strike at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompted condemnation from European foreign ministers. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that "For us French, this would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Saint-Denis." 

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said Russia had "once again demonstrated its barbarity and contempt for humanity's shared heritage," describing the Lavra as a UNESCO World Heritage site and "one of Christianity's holiest monasteries" that had "been a place of worship for nearly a thousand years."

✇Euromaidan Press

Russia’s construction on Crimea’s only World Heritage site exposed 500,000 artifacts. UNESCO has just declared complex is in danger

Par : Olena Mukhina
23 juillet 2026 à 07:21

Crimea UNESCO site Khersones Chersonesus

UNESCO has officially recognized that Russia is destroying Crimea's only World Heritage site. The UN body added "the Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora" to its List of World Heritage in Danger, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha announced on X. The decision was taken at the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee.

Chersonesus Taurica is an ancient Greek city founded by colonists in the 6th century BCE on the territory of modern Sevastopol, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013, and the only site of world significance in Crimea, per Suspilne.

Since occupying Crimea in 2014, Russia has stripped the site of its contents. Ukraine's Defense Intelligence has documented Russia appropriating cultural artifacts from Chersonesus and other Crimean sites through unauthorized digs, with 178 items tracked in the "Stolen Heritage" section of the War & Sanctions portal by late 2025.

The frescoes, pottery, household objects, and icons taken from Chersonesus went to museums in Russia. Russian construction on the site, backed by illegal excavations, has unlocked access to up to 500,000 artifacts.

Site is target because of what it means

Chersonesus is where, by tradition, the medieval Kyivan prince Volodymyr was baptized in 988. This is the event Russian state ideology claims as the origin point of Russian Orthodoxy and, by extension, of a shared "all-Russian" history that absorbs Ukraine.

Russia has built its occupation narrative on that claim, making the Ukrainian site tell a Russian story, which is why Russian President Vladimir Putin personally backed turning it into the centerpiece of one of Russia's most ambitious propaganda projects.

That project is the "New Chersonesus" museum-and-park complex, opened in July 2024 on the grounds of the ancient site. Russian authorities built a sprawling development that includes museums, a Christian-themed park, an open-air theater, and reconstructed quarters, marketing it as a showcase of Orthodox and Russian civilization.

To raise it, Russian archaeologists and developers dug through the untouched layers of the ancient city, and the complex drew 700,000 visitors by October 2024, its foot traffic accelerating the destruction of the fragile archaeology beneath it. The result is a Russian-built theme park standing on, and made from the ruins of, a Ukrainian World Heritage site.

Russia built theater on necropolis

In 2024, Russian archaeologists and developers completely destroyed the authentic monument, building a new open-air theater on the site of the excavations, said Evelina Kravchenko, senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences, per Ukrainska Pravda.

Russia substitutes new construction for original monuments, destroying their authenticity, Kravchenko said at the Crimea Platform expert network forum.

"Negative processes are now happening with the only monument of world significance that we managed to nominate and inscribe on the list of monuments in Crimea, with Chersonesus Taurica," she claimed.

What Russia presents as heritage preservation, Ukrainian experts describe as the erasure of the original under a replica.

Listing rests on documented violations

The basis for the UNESCO decision was Russia's documented conduct on the peninsula: illegal archaeological excavations, large-scale construction on the monument's territory and its protective zones, destruction of the archaeological context, and the illegal movement of cultural property, the President's Representative Office in Crimea explained.

The decision also called on the international community to strengthen cooperation to prevent the illegal circulation of cultural property originating from occupied Crimea. During the discussion, representatives of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland openly supported Ukraine.

One site in vast toll

Chersonesus is a single entry in a campaign against Ukrainian heritage that spans the whole war. Russia has damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 Ukrainian cultural heritage sites since 2022, and looted over 7.8 million artifacts from museums in occupied territory since 2014, Ukraine's prosecutor general reported in June 2026.

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