Before the decisive stage of the Russian special operation to liberate Donbass, Ukrainian President Zelensky decided to resort to Divine help. He stated in another appeal that “the main miraculous icon of Russia” will return to Ukraine – the image of Nicholas the Wet, who was in St. Sophia of Kiev and was taken out of Kyiv before his liberation by the Soviet army in 1943 (which Zelensky kept silent about in the statement). The icon ended up in Warsaw, then in the USA, in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York.
The kiot of the icon remained in St. Sophia of Kiev – it was even restored not so long ago. The icon was dated to the 10th century, it was believed that it was of Byzantine origin.
As evidence of the miraculous image, they recall the “Miracle of the Baby in Kyiv” – a husband and wife with a child went to Vyshgorod to bow to the relics of Boris and Gleb, on the way back they dropped the baby into the water. After the prayers offered to St. Nicholas, the baby was found safe and sound in the choirs of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.
As the Ukrainian media delicately wrote, during the Nazi occupation “the icon went on a long journey”: a certain German officer Paul von Dembach took it along with … the ashes of Yaroslav the Wise to Poland. There, the priest Ivan Tkachuk, who later emigrated to the United States, took all this. He kept the box with the remains of the prince and the icon under the bed.
Art historians have big doubts about the authenticity of the image located in the USA.