Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus M.V. Ryzhenkov Visited the Ascension Cathedral in Alma-Ata

15 April 2026. Alma-Ata. A delegation of the Government of the Republic of Belarus, headed by Minister of Foreign Affairs M.V. Ryzhenkov, visited the Ascension Cathedral.

The guests, who are in the Southern Capital on an official visit, were received, with the blessing of Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan, by the cathedral’s sacristan and head of the Metropolitan District’s Department for Public Relations, Archpriest Alexander Suvorov.

Archpriest Alexander told Maxim Vladimirovich about the history of the construction of the Ascension Cathedral, emphasizing that this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the church’s return to its lawful owner – the Orthodox Church. The sacristan also shared documentary evidence showing that innovative engineering methods and seismic-resistance technologies, advanced for their time, were used in the construction of the cathedral, built according to the design of the gifted architect-engineer A.P. Zenkov. Thanks to these methods, the cathedral withstood the devastating 1911 earthquake, which destroyed almost all the buildings in the city of Verny.

During the экскурсия, the Belarusian minister learned about the details of the full-scale professional restoration of the church, carried out from 2017 to 2020 on the initiative and with the blessing of Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan, under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Kazakhstan and UNESCO, with the participation of local scholars and highly qualified specialists from Russia, Serbia, Italy, Germany, and France.

In his account, Father Alexander noted that President Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev, during his visit to the cathedral and meeting with the Head of the Metropolitan District, highly praised this monumental restoration project, calling it the “second birth of a national shrine of all Kazakhstan.”

M.V. Ryzhenkov remarked upon the elegance and grandeur of the cathedral’s exterior and the beauty of its interiors. Before the cathedral’s sacred objects – including the gift of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, the icon of the “Image of the Lord Jesus Christ Not Made by Hands,” and the gift of Metropolitan Alexander, the Feodorovskaya-Alma-Ata Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, an exact full-scale copy of the wonderworking revealed icon of the Queen of Heaven – the minister lit candles.

As a remembrance of the visit to the Ascension Cathedral, publications recounting the history of the church were presented to the guests on behalf of Metropolitan Alexander.