Lera Furman, specially for Novaya Gazeta Europe
In the territories of Donbas and Pryazovia controlled by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, clergy and church activists whose faith does not please the “new authorities” are being repressed. Novaya Gazeta Europe examines the case of a Zaporizhzhia priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) sentenced to 14 years of strict regime — the very church that Moscow, until very recently, called “canonical.”
Non-recognition of Gundyaev is “espionage”
The transfer (“etapirovanie”) of Fr. Konstantin Maksimov, a 41-year-old priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (the Moscow Patriarchate considers it an inseparable part of itself), convicted by the Russian authorities on charges of “espionage,” from Crimea to a strict-regime colony in Saratov Region took place in February. As the Norwegian human rights project Forum18 managed to find out, on 3 February the priest was taken out of Simferopol SIZO No. 2, and on 11 February he was placed in quarantine at Colony No. 23 of the Federal Penitentiary Service for Saratov Region in the settlement of Kamensky.
On 25 February, after the end of quarantine, Fr. Konstantin was transferred to the general cell and assigned to Unit No. 10. The colony is located more than a thousand kilometers from the city of Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia Region, where the priest lived and served.
A major industrial center 85 km south of Zaporizhzhia, Tokmak was one of the few centers of fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces and the local militia to the Russian offensive in March 2022. On 2 March the siege of the city began, and a few days later Russian troops took it under their control, with part of the local administration being arrested. A couple of months later it became known about the death of the city’s mayor, Ihor Kotelevskyi, 57, who had held this post since 2009 and was beloved by townspeople. He refused to cooperate with the “new authorities.”
Despite the fact that the city turned into a front-line zone and most of the population left, priest Konstantin Maksimov continued to serve in the Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in Tokmak, which suffered damage during the shelling of the city. The church is part of the Berdyansk Diocese of the UOC, headed by Metropolitan Yefrem (Yarynko). He did not enter into contact with the new administration and became a refugee, for which on 17 August 2022 he even received an award from the primate of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky) — he was elevated to the rank of metropolitan.
In cooperation with the Russian authorities, the Moscow Patriarchate began its annexation of territories occupied by Russian troops. According to the Patriarchate (it is not easy to verify this information under wartime conditions), on 1 May 2023 in Berdyansk an illegal gathering of the clergy of the Berdyansk Diocese of the UOC took place. It was illegal because, under the statutes of the diocese and of the UOC, such gatherings may be convened and conducted only by diocesan hierarchs or bishops acting in their stead. It is still unknown who exactly convened and held the illegal meeting — most likely, this question should be addressed not to the clergy but to the Russian administration. According to the ROC, 76 out of 86 clerics of the diocese signed at the meeting an appeal to Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) on the “transfer of the diocese” into direct subordination to the ROC, which grossly violates the statutes of both the ROC and the UOC. Having granted broad autonomy to the Ukrainian Church in 1990, the ROC renounced the right to in any way change diocesan boundaries in Ukraine or appoint ruling hierarchs there — such decisions may be taken only by the UOC Synod in Kyiv.
Nevertheless, disregarding its own statute and the norms of canon law, which prohibit appointing a bishop to a see already occupied by another bishop, the ROC Synod on 16 May 2023 “transferred” the Berdyansk Diocese into “direct canonical subordination” to the patriarch, thereby committing an act of church aggression and the seizure of someone else’s “canonical territory,” which in church law is characterized as “schism.” The Synod appointed Bishop Luka (Volchkov), who had previously headed the Iskitim Diocese in Novosibirsk Region, as the “administrator of the diocese.” In response to these actions, the UOC Synod accused the priests of the Berdyansk Diocese who had signed the appeal to the patriarch of “sowing turmoil and temptation” and promised to prohibit them from ministry for schism. Prior to the Berdyansk Diocese affair, Patriarch Kirill had already annexed UOC dioceses in Crimea and Donbas, but those changed jurisdiction together with their hierarchs. In Berdyansk, however, Moscow for the first time proceeded to appoint a “parallel” bishop.
Among the five priests who dared, at the Berdyansk meeting, to refuse to sign the appeal to the patriarch was Fr. Konstantin Maksimov. Despite pressure and threats, he remained in the jurisdiction of the UOC, that is, in canonical subordination to Kyiv.
Moreover, according to rumors, he refused to accept Russian citizenship, which the authorities and the newly, illegally appointed bishop ordered all clerics of the diocese to do.
It is obvious that in this “excessively” pro-Ukrainian stance the authorities saw signs of “espionage” — in that same May 2023 Fr. Konstantin was detained at the Chonhar checkpoint (so much for the “reunification of Russian lands”: between Crimea and Zaporizhzhia Region, which the Russian Federation declared its regions and entered into its Constitution, control still exists that is identical to a state border). At first the priest was taken to the temporary detention facility in Melitopol, and then, after a criminal case was initiated, transferred to Simferopol SIZO No. 2, where he spent a long 21 months.
The trial began on 6 June of last year, and on 2 August the so-called Zaporizhzhia Regional Court held an off-site session at the Supreme Court of Crimea, where it handed down to Fr. Konstantin a sentence under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (espionage): 14 years in a strict-regime colony. The verdict claims that the priest collected information about the location of Russian air-defense systems in Tokmak and allegedly transmitted it via the Internet to an SBU employee.
Little is known about Fr. Konstantin — he was not a media-promoted figure and is practically absent from social networks. He was born in 1983, in 2003 graduated from the Poltava Missionary Theological School, and in 2006 from the Pochaiv Theological Seminary in Ternopil Region. After being ordained a priest, he was assigned to a rural church in Donetsk Region, and graduated from Donetsk University. During the hostilities in August 2014, the priest’s house was destroyed by a shell, and he moved with his family to Zaporizhzhia, effectively becoming a refugee. He was assigned to the church in the village of Ternovate, and in 2021 transferred to Tokmak. He ended up at the Chonhar checkpoint as part of a volunteer humanitarian mission.
Fr. Konstantin filed an appeal against the decision of the so-called Zaporizhzhia court, and on 14 November of last year his complaint was considered by the appellate court in Moscow by a panel headed by Judge Pavel Melekhin. The panel “found no grounds for imposing a more lenient punishment.” It is assumed that the session in Moscow took place in the absence of the defendant himself. The priest’s relatives are still in shock at what happened; his mother, Svetlana, who lives in territory controlled by Ukraine, told journalists of her hope that her son would be included in the prisoner-exchange list. She last saw her son in December 2021. Svetlana faces great difficulties in corresponding with him, but she managed to learn that in the Simferopol SIZO a ROC priest visited Fr. Konstantin and gave him Communion.
Territories without rights
Article 76 of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War obliges states controlling the territories of other states to apply, with respect to the population that resided in those territories before the start of hostilities, the legislation of the countries that controlled these territories before the war — that is, in the case of Zaporizhzhia Region, the legislation of Ukraine. Accordingly, persons convicted under this legislation may serve their sentences only on the territory of their own country, even if it is controlled by another state. However, since the autumn of 2022, the Russian Federation has treated the territories it has occupied in southeastern Ukraine as “new subjects of the Federation,” denying any occupation or annexation. But it is clear that the Russian interpretation does not cancel international law, and from its point of view Ukraine possesses sovereignty, and its territorial integrity is protected by that very law.
It was previously reported that at least 13 Jehovah’s Witnesses were convicted in Crimea, with 11 of them serving their sentences in the internationally recognized territory of the Russian Federation. For example, in January of this year, a court in Sevastopol sentenced Sergei Zhigalov, 53, and Viktor Kudinov, 55, to six years in prison for organizing the activities of an “extremist” community (Jehovah’s Witnesses received this status in the Russian Federation in 2017, and since then hundreds of believers of this confession have passed through SIZOs and camps).
Likewise, convicted activists of Crimean Tatar or Muslim organizations in Crimea, as a rule, serve their sentences in mainland Russia.
In the territories of Crimea and Donbas controlled by the Russian Federation, a number of other religious organizations are also banned — organizations that are not only freely registered in Ukraine but also play a key role in the Ukrainian confessional landscape. We are talking about the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), and certain Protestant denominations. In the “constitutions” of the “DPR” and “LPR” during the era of their unrecognized “independence,” the “dominant” role of the Russian Orthodox Church was prescribed — in formulations reminiscent of the legislation of the Russian Empire… In November 2022, the Greek-Catholic priests Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Heleta, who were serving in Pryazovia, disappeared, and all five UGCC communities in this region were “liquidated” by the Russian administration. Only almost half a year later, after significant efforts by the Vatican and other international mediators, were the priests exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. More tragic was the fate of Fr. Stepan Podolchak, a 59-year-old OCU priest kidnapped by unknown persons in the village of Kalanchak in the left-bank part of Kherson Region, controlled by the Russian Federation. On 15 February of last year his body was found in a roadside ditch on one of the streets of his village. According to Ukrainian human rights defenders, Russian security forces accused Fr. Stepan of extremist activity; for some time he was held in a filtration camp in the vicinity of Chaplynka. The head of the Ukrainian military administration of Kalanchak, Svitlana Fomina, who is now in Kherson, said that Fr. Stepan bravely served in the Ukrainian language and openly prayed for Ukraine right up until the day of his detention. Protestant and Muslim community activists in the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions controlled by the Russian Federation faced similar problems when they did not join the Russian centralized organizations of their confessions.
A recent report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Ukraine (within its internationally recognized borders) lists cases of “arbitrary detention, torture, including sexual violence, and disappearances resulting from the detention of civilians in territory occupied by the [RF Armed Forces].” The Office collected evidence that a number of civilians in this territory were detained “for what constitutes lawful religious practice or the free expression of religious beliefs.” Crimea, Donbas, and parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions controlled by the Russian Federation have become a kind of model testing ground for the “values of the Russian world” — and it is already obvious to all who are aware how these “values” are refracted in the sphere of religious life. The totalitarian ideology of Moscow is absolutely incompatible with any freedom of conscience or religion.
Source: novayagazeta.eu