An American activist who spent years repeating Russian talking points told her followers she had been wrong about Ukraine. Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump, shared her impressions with hundreds of thousands of followers after visiting the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Dormition Cathedral, damaged by a Russian drone strike.
The visit is the public face of a documented reversal. Loomer long echoed Kremlin narratives and criticized US aid to Ukraine, and after a fact-finding trip to Kyiv in July 2026, she acknowledged she had been "propagandized by Russian media."
"I was living in a media echo chamber, and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself," she wrote.
The Lavra tour, alongside senior Ukrainian officials, was the culmination of that trip, which also took her to the mass graves in Bucha and through Russian strikes on the capital.
"Putin droned Jesus Christ. The Woke Reich and Russia don't want you to see this video..." Loomer wrote on X, attaching a four-minute clip recorded inside the Lavra's main cathedral.
Ukrainian officials welcomed visit
Loomer toured the Lavra with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berehna and First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia.
The National Reserve said she was shown the Tower of St. John the Recluse, the Mystetskyi Arsenal building, and the Dormition Cathedral, all of which were damaged in the 15 June Russian attack, and was briefed on the restoration.
"It was interesting to sit down and talk to LauraLoomer and then to go to Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Wednesday," Kyslytsia wrote, thanking Loomer for "taking the initiative and traveling to Ukraine at this time."
Berehna framed it as a matter of witness.
"Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage while Ukrainians simply want to live, create, raise children, and build our future. Thank you, Laura, for visiting Ukraine," she said.
Dormition Cathedral lost most of its roof
The site Loomer filmed carries a specific loss. The Dormition Cathedral lost more than 80% of its roof in the Russian attack, and over a dozen sites across the National Reserve were damaged.
The cathedral is not incidental to the war on heritage. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, founded in 1051.
A Russian strike damaging it is the kind of event Ukraine has documented across its cultural landscape: nearly 2,000 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since 2022, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.
Russia's strike at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompted condemnation from European foreign ministers. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that "For us French, this would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Saint-Denis."
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said Russia had "once again demonstrated its barbarity and contempt for humanity's shared heritage," describing the Lavra as a UNESCO World Heritage site and "one of Christianity's holiest monasteries" that had "been a place of worship for nearly a thousand years."
Read also
-
Russia has damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 Ukrainian cultural heritage sites since 2022 — prosecutor general calls Lavra strike deliberate erasure
-
Ukraine finds uranium in six more Russian drones. Their radiation readings ran up to 80 times background
-
Two companies that actually build Patriots describe Ukrainian production as “just started,” while Russia is firing ballistic missiles every night
