A FORMER Russian Orthodox priest, now ministering as an Anglican, has urged Western church support for a close friend arrested in Moscow and accused of plotting to kill a senior Russian Orthodox bishop in Ukraine.
“This arrest was timed with current negotiations with the United States — to make the Ukrainian side look inhuman,” the Priest-in-Charge of Christ Church, Ayia Napa, in Cyprus, the Revd George Vidiakin, said.
“But the Russian regime is afraid of having public light spread on its evil deeds. So I’m asking Christians everywhere to pray and spread the word about these latest unjust detentions.”
Nikita Ivankovich, a Moscow-born ethnic Ukrainian serving as a lay subdeacon at the Church of the Resurrection, in the central Sokolniki district in Moscow, was awaiting trial for alleged involvement in a murder plot against Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Simferopol-Crimea, a close associate of President Putin.
In a Church Times interview, Fr Vidiakin said that Russia’s FSB security police had circulated a video of Ivankovich and a co-defendant, Denis Popovich, confessing to arranging the crime at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence.
He said, however, that his friend was a staunch pacifist with no public influence, and that he believed he had fallen victim to a “witch hunt” to find “Ukrainian spies in church structures”.
A reference to the case last week by Putin himself appeared to have sealed Ivankovich’s fate, Fr Vidiakin told the Church Times. “It suggests everything has already been decided — since Putin’s own image and reputation are involved, he’ll face a heavy sentence,” he said. He had joined the Anglican diocese of Cyprus & the Gulf in March 2020, after six years as a Russian Orthodox cleric, mostly serving at Limassol.
“Nikita’s elderly mother has health problems, and fully relies on him. Knowing what happened to Alexei Navalny, I fear for anyone imprisoned in the harsh conditions of Russia.”
Ivankovich, a theologian and lay reader, was arrested on 12 February, with the Ukrainian-born Mr Popovich, also a lay church worker, and accused of conspiring to kill Metropolitan Tikhon, who was reassigned to Russian-occupied Crimea in October 2023, after heading the Russian Orthodox diocese of Pskov.
The laymen, both in their late twenties, had earlier been accused of supporting Ukraine in church-linked social media posts.
The Novosti news agency described Mr Popovich as a former secretary to Tikhon, and said that the two men had been recruited by Ukrainian military intelligence to kill the Metropolitan with an improvised bomb, during a planned visit to the Sretensky Monastery, in Moscow.
The agency reported that Tikhon, widely seen as a possible successor to Patriarch Kirill, had long been close to President Putin, who awarded him state honours in 2022 and 2024.
Reuters reported that Kyiv’s involvement had been vigorously denied by Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, who insisted that his country was fighting “according the rules and international law”.
Speaking last week, however, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Church-State Relations Department, Vladimir Legoyda, said that the plot had been designed to “escalate confrontation” and “disrupt peace talks”, demonstrating the “terrorist nature” of Ukrainian activities, and should be discussed at the United Nations Security Council.
In a weekend address to the Pskov branch of Russia’s Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, President Putin said he had heard about the “enemy attempt” on Tikhon’s life; he went on to say that Russian Orthodox priests were “not at war with anyone”.
In his Church Times interview, Fr Vidiakin said that Russian media had depicted the planned assassination of the Metropolitan, who has helped to supervise Crimea’s Russification, as a “typical act” by Ukrainian forces, in an effort to erode the country’s image with President Trump and the new US Administration.
“Most Russian Orthodox clergy are neutral towards the Ukraine war. While a minority silently opposes it, a more vocal minority actively supports both the war and Putin’s regime,” Fr Vidiakin, who was licensed in the diocese of Cyprus & the Gulf in October 2021, said.
“While some clergy have been suspended and defrocked for their political views before, this was done by the Russian Church. Today, for the first time, the state and government are also acting against churchpeople who oppose the war.”
Fr Vidiakin, who was ordained priest in 2014, said that he had befriended Mr Ivankovich through mutual friends favouring liberal reforms, and that he had decided to leave the Russian Church and become an Anglican for “political and personal reasons”.
“It’s important to distinguish between Russian church authorities like Patriarch Kirill, who benefit from the Putin regime’s support, and ordinary priests and laypeople who may hold different views but cannot express them out of fear for their lives or those of their loved ones,” Fr Vidiakin said.
“But I always objected to the Russian Church’s support for the regime, and felt I’d found the church tradition I wished to belong to when I became an Anglican. Although I’ve faced some negative feedback from Orthodox people who view those who leave as traitors, my Orthodox friends have warmly accommodated my decision.”
