Nikita Ivankovich, a Russian Orthodox theologian and subdeacon, and Denis Popovich, a church employee, were arrested in February on accusations that they attempted to assassinate Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov. Shevkunov, the Metropolitan of Crimea, has been described in the media as “Putin’s confessor.”
Russian media outlet Novosti claims that the two men planned to kill Shevkunov with an improvised bomb during a planned visit to Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, acting on behalf of Ukrainian military intelligence. Russia’s secret police, the FSB, circulated a video of the two church workers confessing their crimes.
But Ivankovich’s friend, Anglican priest George Vidiakin, doesn’t believe it. He thinks the story was invented to scare Russians into thinking that Ukrainians have infiltrated all aspects of society, including the church.
Vidiakin, an ethnic Russian, was a Russian Orthodox priest for six years before being received into the Anglican Church. He now serves Christ Church, Ayia Napa, in Cyprus.
“We do not believe he’s capable of assassinating anyone,” Vidiakin said. “He’s a very peaceful person.”
Ivankovich, Vidiakin claims, had enjoyed a good relationship with Shevkunov, as did Popovich, who served as Shevkunov’s assistant. Ivankovich and Popovich both expressed their deep affection for Bishop Tikhon in statements published by Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, which also recounted the tortures they endured at the hands of Russian police.
The two are in prison awaiting a trial, which has yet to be scheduled. Vidiakin is worried that neither will receive a fair trial, and hopes to bring Western attention to the case. “Although I am in the dock, I hope that the truth will ultimately prevail. My heart still burns with the desire to serve God,” said the translation of Popovich’s published statement.
Both Ivankovich and Popovich are ethnic Ukrainians. Ivankovich was raised in Moscow, and Popovich moved to Russia over a decade ago. Large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians live in Russia, and many are clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Religious life was less fully suppressed by the Soviets in Western Ukraine, and the Russian Orthodox Church recruited many Ukrainians to serve as clergy during its revitalization period.
Many other Ukrainians moved to Russia for economic opportunities. Some Ukrainians have fully assimilated into Russian society, but others retain deep affection for their homeland and people. But while before the war this was not seen as a potential problem, now any hint of pro-Ukrainian sentiment is seen as possible subversion.
Vidiakin is quick to say the Russian state is not solely targeting Ukrainians, but anyone who may disagree with it. The best-known contemporary dissident was Alexei Navalny, a Russian lawyer and political prisoner who died in 2024 after disappearing from a Siberian prison camp. But thousands of other people—from all walks of Russian society, including teenagers—have been arrested since the war against Ukraine began in 2022.
It’s an especially fraught time to be a priest. The official stance of the Russian Orthodox Church has been extremely pro-war, to the point of calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “holy war.” The Russian church portrays Ukraine as an agent of the West, which it says promotes Satanism over true Christianity.
In a sermon in September 2022, several months after the war against Ukraine began, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church told soldiers that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins.” After the war began, the Russian Orthodox Church introduced a new prayer for Russia’s victory, which priests are supposed to recite during the Divine Liturgy.
The Russian church was also already at odds with many other Orthodox churches over spiritual jurisdiction in Ukraine even before the war began. After the 2018 announcement that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople would grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Russian church unilaterally severed full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch and the churches directly subject to him, including the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
In Ukraine, approximately equal numbers of churches are affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine-Moscow Patriarchate, which resisted the movement toward autocephaly. The Ukrainian government formally banned the Moscow Patriarchate-affiliated church in 2024, characterizing its clergy as pro-Russian fifth columnists, but fewer than 1,000 churches have switched jurisdictions.
Some Orthodox priests in Russia fully support Kirill’s aggressive posture toward Ukraine, and Orthodox clergy have died while ministering to those at the front. But others are strongly opposed. Most have kept quiet about their opinions, fearing that priests deemed insufficiently loyal will be laicized.
Vidiakin says that this has happened to several of his friends. “If you are a middle-aged man, it’s not very easy to start a new life. They don’t have a secular profession,” he said, adding that many Russian Orthodox clergy have served the church for all their adult lives.
Vidiakin doesn’t think most Russians support the war. “It’s a vocal minority,” he said. This does not mean they’re pro-Ukraine: rather, they simply do not care. At least initially, the war seemed like a distant problem. The front was far away, and the Russian military tended to conscript young men from Russia’s ethnic minorities, not those from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
But now that Ukraine has ramped up drone strikes against Russia, the effects of the war are more obvious. The Moscow Times reported on September 30 that Ukrainian drone strikes have severely damaged Russian oil refineries, taking out 40 percent of their capacity. On September 28, two people in a Moscow suburb were killed by a fire started by a Ukrainian drone.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
