Zelensky Has Orthodox Church Leader Put Under House Arrest

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Othodox priest Ukraine

A Kyiv court has sentenced a leading priest to house arrest according to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

The Church also said the court had ordered the top Orthodox priest, Metropolitan Pavel, is to wear an electronic bracelet.

Ukraine’s top security agency notified Pavel on Saturday that he was suspected of justifying Russia’s aggression, a criminal offense.

The move comes amid a bitter dispute over a famed Orthodox monastery.

Pavel who is the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site, had been resisting the authorities’ order to vacate the complex.

Al Jazeera reports: The Interfax Ukraine and Ukrinform news agencies said Pavel had been given 60 days of house arrest.

“I haven’t done anything. I believe this is a political order,” the religious leader told reporters after the ruling.

The decision came as Kyiv cracks down on the UOC on the grounds it is pro-Russian and is collaborating with Moscow, a charge the church denies. Earlier in the week, Pavel –  who is the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site – had cursed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, threatening him with damnation.

Prosecutors said the house arrest and electronic bracelet were precautionary measures, with prosecutor Yevhen Zavistovskyi saying that the case against Pavel would continue.

Russia’s TASS state news agency said the court ordered Pavel to live in a village some 40km (25 miles) southeast of Kyiv.

Pavel said the house was not fit for inhabitation.

“There is nothing to sleep on, no heat and no light. There is no kitchen, no spoon. But it’s OK, I’ll endure it all,” he said.

9 Comments

  1. Are the Political Prostitutes calling this Liberal or Conservative? Or doing the Duck,Dodge and Cover trick?

  2. I’ve been looking into the history of the Ukraine situation and its obvious it’s all been set up years ago starting with Stalin making Ukraine schools teach a bastardised form of the native Russian language as Ukrainiun to deceive the world about Ukraines”independence “from the mother Russia which they then set up at the collapse of the ussr. When the EU, the Commonwealth of Nations and the USA were all vondolidatinbbthrif unions of nations for some reason as democracies we were expected to believe the democratic response was to splinter the ussr into independent states separating Russia from its ancient capital city Kiev, and its richest farming lands as if that’s “normal” Obviously its totally not normal democratic practice at all and clearly it was fond to leavdvrisduaxvulnetablrvand to set up totally the present war for the west. Why has England, so I’ve heard, very quietly left nato and why is it a big secret.

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