The committee of Kyiv City Council on local governance made the decision to leave without action the petition on the transfer of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra to the UOC- Kyiv Patriarchate.
Oleksandr Pabat, deputy of the city council wrote it on his Facebook page, DepoKyiv reports. "The petition to change / save the jurisdiction of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, as well as the correspondence with arguments and threats both in favor and against this precedent will be submitted to the Ministry of Culture,” he wrote. Pabat also noted that the Council did not exclude the possibility in the future to return the Lavra estate into municipal ownership. As reported, in December 2015, the petition to transfer Kyiv Pechersk Lavra from the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate to the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate has collected 12,898 signatures, while the minimum required is 10,000. At the same time, the Kyiv Patriarchate said that it is almost impracticable to fulfill the petition requirement.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) called a provocation the petition to transfer Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra to the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate.