Skvortsov recalled the Port Arthur icon of the Mother of God, donated to the Bosnian Serbs by Russian Cossacks in the 21st century. According to him, this image is in the temple of the Bosnian Vysehrad built by Emir Kusturica.
The publicist emphasized that icons are created by the people of the Church, Orthodox Christians, who do not divide the Church along state borders.
Therefore, the legal owner of the church relic has the right to dispose of it at his own discretion, Skvortsov noted. For the Orthodox, the Church is "one and catholic," he said.
Read the full interview here.
Earlier, the chairman of the Presidium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian representative Milorad Dodik, presented the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with an icon, saying that it is 300 years old and it was allegedly found in Luhansk.
In response, the Ukrainian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina sent a note to the government in Sarajevo, demanding "to immediately and unequivocally find out how the gilded icon from Luhansk ended up in the country." The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called the icon an object of the country's cultural heritage.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed its readiness to return the icon to the donors.
The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine reported that the icon is stamped by the Odessa Regional Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Material Culture and Nature, and said that they would send inquiries to museums and law enforcement agencies to establish the origin and movement of the icon.
