Hetman Sahaydachny may lie beneath NaUKMA grounds, reserve official says

Hetman Sahaydachny may lie beneath NaUKMA grounds, reserve official says AI

Roman Malenkov, deputy director of the Ancient Kyiv reserve, told LB.ua that 2023 excavations on the NaUKMA (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) campus uncovered a standing wall and floor that point to an intact crypt — possibly holding hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaydachny. He says the digs were halted and reburied. The finds sit on the NaUKMA/Contractova Square area of Podil, a high-priority archaeological zone where university, city and conservation bodies clash over access and heritage protection.

In an August 2026 interview with LB.ua, Roman Malenkov described 2023 archaeological work on the site of the former Epiphany (Bogoiavlensky) Cathedral inside the NaUKMA campus. He says archaeologists exposed about a meter and a half of surviving stone wall and a preserved floor — conditions that typically imply an underlying crypt.

Malenkov told the paper historical sources and 19th-century research record burials beneath the cathedral, and argued one of the crypts could contain hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaydachny (d.1622). He says the privately organised excavations were stopped by the university’s leadership after several weeks; the trenches were filled with sand and covered with asphalt.

Malenkov and the city’s Department for Protection of Cultural Heritage say they attempted further work in 2024–25 and had funding, but access and institutional disagreement with NaUKMA’s administration have prevented new digs. The interview frames the episode as a lost archaeological opportunity on a sensitive Podil site; LB.ua has the full conversation and photographs.

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