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Russia Threatens Israel with Legal Action to Regain Ownership of 3 Churches in Jerusalem

This picture taken on December 20, 2021 shows a view of an Israeli flag flying near the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. (AFP via Getty Images)
This picture taken on December 20, 2021 shows a view of an Israeli flag flying near the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. (AFP via Getty Images)
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Russia Threatens Israel with Legal Action to Regain Ownership of 3 Churches in Jerusalem

This picture taken on December 20, 2021 shows a view of an Israeli flag flying near the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. (AFP via Getty Images)
This picture taken on December 20, 2021 shows a view of an Israeli flag flying near the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. (AFP via Getty Images)

The Russian government has demanded its Israeli counterpart to transfer ownership of three historic churches to Moscow, political sources in Tel Aviv revealed.

Russia wants state ownership of the Maria Magdalena Monastery, the Ascension Monastery, and the Viri Galilaei Church (People of the Galilee) all situated on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

The sources quoted former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who is responsible on behalf of Russia to regain assets in Israel, as saying that he intends to file a lawsuit at an Israeli court to force the Tel Aviv to return ownership of the churches to Russia if refuses to do so through diplomatic means.

According to Israel’s Yediot Aharonot daily, the new lawsuit is intended for internal propaganda in Russia in light of President Valdimir Putin’s declining popularity due to the war in Ukraine.

The newspaper said Russians are concerned about church issues and would like to see their president also interested in them.

“In Russia, they feel that the Israeli Prime Minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing difficulties in forming a government, and therefore, Russian officials believe this is the appropriate timing to put pressure on him to fulfill previous promises he had made to Putin three years ago,” according to a former political activist working in the file of the expulsion of Jews from Russia to Israel.

In 2019, Netanyahu promised Putin that Israel would transfer ownership of the Alexander Nevsky Church and Alexander Square in Jerusalem to Russia.

He said Israel must respond to the Russian claims, because its silence would harm Tel Aviv, especially in light of the war in Ukraine and the West’s united front against Moscow.

Meanwhile, a source close to the Russian Consulate in Haifa said these churches are Russia, and that the Church of Maria Magdalene houses the remains of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, who was killed during the 1918 coup by the Russian secret police.

The Church also houses the remains of Princess Alice, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Britain.

Ottoman and British documents show that the two churches and the monastery are Russian, said the source.

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Wuhan Keen to Shake off Pandemic Label Five Years On

A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
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Wuhan Keen to Shake off Pandemic Label Five Years On

A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)

Built in just days as Covid-19 cases spiked in Wuhan in early 2020, the Huoshenshan Hospital was once celebrated as a symbol of the Chinese city's fight against the virus that first emerged there.

The hospital now stands empty, hidden behind more recently built walls -- faded like most traces of the pandemic as locals move on and officials discourage discussion of it.

On January 23, 2020, with the then-unknown virus spreading, Wuhan sealed itself off for 76 days, ushering in China's zero-Covid era of strict travel and health controls and foreshadowing the global disruption yet to come.

Today, the city's bustling shopping districts and gridlocked traffic are a far cry from the empty streets and crammed emergency rooms that marked the world's first Covid lockdown.

"People are moving forward, these memories are getting fuzzier and fuzzier," Jack He, a 20-year-old university student and Wuhan local, told AFP.

He was in high school when the lockdown was imposed, and he spent much of his sophomore year taking online classes from home.

"We still feel like those few years were especially tough... but a new life has started," He said.

- Official silence -

At the former site of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where scientists believe the virus may have crossed over from animals to humans, a light blue wall has been built to shield the market's closed-down stalls from view.

When AFP visited, workers were putting up Chinese New Year decorations on the windows of the market's second floor, where a warren of opticians' shops still operates.

There is nothing to mark the location's significance -- in fact, there are no major memorials to the lives lost to the virus anywhere in the city.

Official commemorations of Wuhan's lockdown ordeal focus on the heroism of doctors and the efficiency with which the city responded to the outbreak, despite international criticism of the local government's censorship of early cases in December 2019.

The market's old produce stalls have been moved to a new development outside the city center, where it was clear that the city was still on edge about its reputation as the cradle of the pandemic.

Over a dozen vendors at the aptly named New Huanan Seafood Market refused to speak about the market's past.

The owner of one stall told AFP on condition of anonymity that "business here is not what it was before".

Another worker said the market's managers had sent security camera footage of AFP journalists out to a mass WeChat group of stall owners and warned them against speaking to the reporters.

- 'City of heroes'-

One of the few remaining public commemorations of the lockdown is next door to the abandoned Huoshenshan hospital -- an unassuming petrol station that doubles as an "anti-Covid-19 pandemic educational base".

One wall of the station was dedicated to a timeline of the lockdown, complete with photographs of President Xi Jinping visiting Wuhan in March 2020.

An employee told AFP that a small building behind the facility's convenience store housed another exhibit, but it was only open "when leaders come to visit".

But days before the fifth anniversary of the lockdown, those memories seemed far away, the city now a hive of activity.

Locals thronged the Shanhaiguan Road breakfast market, munching on bowls of noodles and deep-fried pastries.

In the upmarket Chuhe Hanjie shopping street, people walked dogs and promenaded in designer outfits while others queued to pick up bubble tea orders.

Chen Ziyi, a 40-year-old Wuhan local, said she believed the city's increased prominence has actually had a positive impact, with more tourists visiting.

"Now everyone pays more attention to Wuhan," she said. "They say Wuhan is the city of heroes."