Translated material
“Putin the Antichrist” and a prayer for an unjust victory: for which a priest from the Sverdlovsk region was fined 100 thousand rubles
I learned almost later than everyone else that a criminal case had been opened against me. One of the journalists called me. They asked if I was the same priest who was being persecuted for his anti-war position. I answered in the affirmative. At first I didn’t understand that we were talking about a criminal case, and I started telling journalists about everything that had happened to me recently.
It all started in March. After the invasion of Russian troops [in Ukraine], I accidentally saw an announcement that a prayer service for the victory would be held at a local monastery. This outraged me: “Did someone attack us? Are we defending ourselves from someone?” That is, in fact, the monastery announced that it would serve a prayer service for victory during the attack. I wrote a comment on a local public page on VKontakte where I harshly criticized this initiative. For this, I was immediately fined 35 thousand rubles under the article on discrediting the Russian army (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code).
As I understand it, the police monitored the posts in local public pages themselves. But because of that comment, several “law-abiding” citizens wrote denunciations: in particular, there was a denunciation from the monastery itself and from the Yekaterinburg diocese. This, of course, helped the police work quickly.
I didn’t manage to collect the money in time to pay the fine, and I don’t have my own savings. As a result, I was also assigned 40 hours of compulsory work, and for two and a half weeks I went to the city center to mow lawns and pick up trash.
From that moment they hooked me, they never let me go. Kept in constant tension. Either they will call you for an interview, or they will come home.
First, employees of Center “E” from Yekaterinburg came to me - two abnormal, wild-looking people. They looked like gopniks from the 90s: one shaved his head, the second looked a little more decent, constantly smoking an electronic pipe a la Sherlock Holmes. They are probably specially selected in this way in order to scare people with their appearance alone. If they didn't have documents, I would definitely think they were bandits. And their poor vocabulary, and the constant use of jargon, and manners - everything pointed to this.
So they came to my house and let’s persuade me: “Come with us. We need to talk to you." As a result, they took me to the local police department and interrogated me there for about six hours.
They asked questions about my comments on VKontakte: in one of them, for example, I condemned the Russian Orthodox Church - after all, they should not call for victory, but for peace. Otherwise, they themselves violate the divine commandments. It’s difficult for me to understand the game of the Great Patriotic War, the search for the enemy, the fight against the evil fascists who allegedly attacked us again.
In another comment I wrote that Putin is the Antichrist. After the first conversation with the police, I deleted my VKontakte page, but the employees of Center E screenshot all my texts. “Law-abiding” citizens again helped them investigate the case: this time local residents acted as informers.
During the survey, comments were read to me and they asked if I wrote it. I confessed.
— For what purpose [did you write this]?
— To express personal opinion and attitude to what is happening.
- How many people have read this?
- Don't know. I have about a thousand people as friends on VKontakte. Of these, 5-10 acquaintances liked my posts.
But what matters to the police is not how many people actually saw the posts, but the fact that I wrote them. As soon as I answered in the affirmative that I had something to do with all the texts, their eyes immediately lit up - they had found the criminal. Typical NKVD attitude towards a person.