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Kiev to celebrate 1025th anniversary of Baptism of Rus with festive prayers, cross-carrying procession, holiday concert

The celebrations will begin at 10:00 local time (11:00 Moscow time) on Saturday on Vladimirskaya Gorka on the hilly bank of the Dnepr River
Photo ITAR-TASS / Zurab Javakhadze
Photo ITAR-TASS / Zurab Javakhadze

KIEV, July 27 (Itar-Tass) - The chanting of festive prayers at the Monument to St. Prince Vladimir the Baptiser of Kievan Rus, a cross-carrying procession, the veneration of ancient holy shrines and a holiday concert on the Kreshchatik Avenue will be the highlights of the celebrations on the occasion of the 1025th anniversary of Baptism of Rus here on Saturday.

The celebrations will begin at 10:00 local time (11:00 Moscow time) on Saturday on Vladimirskaya Gorka on the hilly bank of the Dnepr River. The heads of states and the delegations from the countries, where Orthodox Christian believers prevail, as well as representatives of 15 Local Orthodox Churches, including those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Georgia, Serbia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, Hellas and the Orthodox Church in America will attend a special religious service there. The ceremony will be held near the Monument to St. Prince Vladimir the Great, the Baptizer of Rus. The monument was built in 1853. A magnificent figure of the prince, who has the cross in his right hand and a grand princely cap in the left hand, was made of bronze by sculptor of famous statues on the Anichkov Bridge in St. Petersburg Peter Clodt, architect Alexander Ton designed a 20-meter-high pedestal made of cast-iron plates in the form of a 8-facetted chapel in the Russo-Byzantine style, sculptor Vladimir Demut-Malinovsky decorated the pedestal with the bas-relief “Baptism of Rus”, the Kiev coat of arms and the Order of St. Vladimir.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend a festive religious service on Vladimirskaya Gorka and will visit the Monastery of the Caves, where he will award the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate with the Russian state medals for their major contribution in the development of friendly relations between the nations and the strengthening of spiritual traditions, the Russian presidential press service reported. In the Monastery of the Caves, which is a cradle of Russian Orthodoxy, the believers will attend a ceremony of venerating the Christian shrine - the Cross of Andrew the First Called, which was brought from Moscow on Friday.

Vladimir Putin is also to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovich on Saturday, the Ukrainian presidential press service said.

A festive religious service will begin at 18:00 Moscow time on the Sobornaya Square of the Monastery of the Caves, and a concert will be held on Kreshchatik, the central street of Kiev, in an hour. This place is picked up for a concert on the occasion of the 1025th anniversary of Baptism of Rus not accidentally. Kreshchatny Yar was located here in the past on which the residents of the ancient city of Kiev went down to the Dnepr bank, where they were baptised.

Ukrainian and Russian entertainers, spiritual choirs and the Kuban Cossacks Choir will perform at the concert, head of the international public organization Day of Baptism of Rus Oleg Karamazov told Itar-Tass. He added that the concert will be not only entertaining, several historical religious stories will be staged by a famous theologian Andrei Tkachev in the intervals between the performances. The organizers of the concert noted that the goal of these stories is to remind the young people of the history of Rus. The primates of the Local Orthodox Churches are expected to attend the concert on Kreshchatik. They will welcome the participants of a religious procession with the relics of St. Prince Vladimir the Baptiser of Rus that began in Vladivostok.