A post shared on Facebook purports Orthodox relics from Kyiv, Ukraine are set to be auctioned at the Osenat Auction House in France on Oct. 1.
Verdict: False
An Oct. 1 auction listed on Osenat's website focuses on "The Interiors of Versailles," not Orthodox relics from Kyiv, as the post suggests. An Osenat spokesperson denied the claim's validity in an email to Reuters.
Russia often claims that it protects traditional values and Orthodox Christianity, while destroying, damaging, or looting hundreds of churches in Ukraine.
Social media posts claim footage of people easily removing debris from a Ukrainian cathedral after a Russian air strike proves the attack was faked. This is false; AFP and other news outlets covered the destruction, and the original video appears to show a woman carrying pieces of lightweight insulation.
A video has gone viral on social media, with users claiming it shows proof that the destruction of a historic cathedral in Odesa on the night of July 22 to 23 was staged by Ukrainian authorities. They argue that a woman in the video picks up the debris with too much ease for it to be real. However, the woman is actually picking up a light material, most likely polystyrene, so this does not prove that the attack was staged.
Information about the destruction of the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral
appeared in the Wikipedia article about the church shortly after it became
clear which buildings were damaged by the Russian attack on Odesa during
the night of July 23. Ukrainian Wikipedia administrator Anatoliy Lutsyuk
explains that the editing history of Wikipedia uses UTC time, which
currently is three hours ahead of Kyiv time.
Russian media and Telegram channels' claims that the Pope has allegedly called on Ukrainian authorities to dismiss the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra abbot is baseless. As of today, none of the Vatican's official resources have published anything about this.
A French auction house representative told StopFake that a billboard
advertising the sale of Ukrainian icons from the Kyiv Monastery of the
Caves is fake, and no such an auction is planned. The Osenat website has no
auctions scheduled for October 1. Claims that the West is exporting and
selling Ukrainian artworks are Russian disinformation.
Several churches and a Jewish yeshiva destroyed or damaged by Russian shelling. BBC News report from March 2022.
UNESCO list of damaged cultural sites in Ukraine - 260 as of 19 June. (Note that this list includes only those sites that have been verified by UNESCO - a complete list would be far longer.)
Ukraine decided to temporarily evacuate sixteen Byzantine icons from the
Khanenko Museum to the Louvre due to continuous Russian shelling of the
civilian infrastructure and cultural heritage sites. The Ministry of
Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine assures that the icons will
return home as soon as the situation allows. As a reminder, in October
2022, as a result of a Russian missile attack, the historical building and
interior decoration of the Khanenko Museum were damaged.
