The Georgian patriarchate on Tuesday distanced itself from a rally in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi related to the controversies around the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, with a group of demonstrators accusing the Ukrainian authorities of violating the clerics’ rights in the major monastery complex. 

The rally, with demonstrators planned to gather at the Ukrainian Embassy in Tbilisi, came following the Ukrainian government’s setting deadline for the monks and priests in the monastery complex until March 29 to vacate the lavra due to their Russian links, on the backdrop of Kyiv’s ongoing conflict with Moscow.  

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, earlier supported by the Ukrainian state, found itself sidelined after the government endorsed the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018–2019. Although the older church claimed it suspended ties with the Russian Orthodox Church following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, it still remains formally dependent on it. 

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy also backed the non-renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s lease last week, describing it as a step forward towards his country’s “spiritual independence” from the aggressor. 

The small rally in Tbilisi also followed the Georgian patriarch Ilia II letter on March 25  to Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in which he expressed concerns over the lavra matters and requested Bartholomew I to help “reduce tensions” by ensuring conditions for “peaceful coexistence, and then a step towards mutual rapprochement.”

Some domestic theologists claimed the letter served the “Russian interests”  amid the Georgian patriarchate’s “silence” over the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.