Faith, belonging, survival – and now destruction: a photographic account of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra monastery before Russia’s attack

Award-winning French photographer Laetitia Vançon has spent years capturing images at Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra monastery complex. She says the Lavra ‘became a reflection of everything Ukraine has been going through’. Now the Unesco world heritage site has been damaged by Russian airstrikes. This selection of pictures brings together some of the scenes she has witnessed and, she says, serves as a reminder that ‘when a place like this is hit, it is never only stones and domes that are damaged’ Continue reading...