‘A second front’: fight to save 1,000-year-old caves from developers in Ukraine

Archaeologists say cave complex must be preserved for indisputable and cultural value'

Dmytro Perov was at his day job, analysing planning applications for Kyiv city council, when he saw a familiar address - the derelict house in central Kyiv built by his family in the late 1800s that was confiscated by the Bolsheviks. The owners of the site now wanted to build on it and had made the unlikely claim that their office was based at the house, which Perov knew had no roof and collapsed walls.

When he was a child, his grandmother said somewhere on the land around the former family home were rumoured to be ancient caves. He described it as a small family legend". Ukraine is home to a few cave complexes, most of which were built by monks, the most famous being Kyiv's Pecherska Lavra - or Cave Monastery in English.