Evil against Charov

A preacher appeared before the military court, who decided to go to the cross for the sake of the commandment “not to kill”. Witness - Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church

The priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Igor Savvateev from the small Ural village of Savinovo gave in the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg the testimony of his fellow villager. In modern Russian realities, this does not seem to sound like a sensation. But the case that this military court listens is very unusual.

At the dock, the creator and many years of the Savinovskaya "almshouse", disabled person, a Christian preacher who does not relary himself to any faith, Eduard Charov. The subject of the proceedings is “justification of terrorism” and “repeated discrediting of the RF Armed Forces”. Back in 2022, Charov covered the slope in his shelter, and then periodically condemned his: he posted on VKontakte an ironic commentary on an attempt to arson the military registration and enlistment office and the video of Evgeny Prigozhin with criticism of the Ministry of Defense. The 54-year-old disabled person threatens up to seven years in prison; Now he is under subscription about the lack of departure and the prohibition of certain actions (including does not have the right to use the Internet and communicate with reporters). A relatively soft measure of restraint, the court appointed Charov for health reasons - at the time of the start of the trial, he was in the hospital. The court began on the interrogation of witnesses on July 25. The meeting was performed by the rector of the Assumption Church in Savinov and pensioner Valentina Kopyrkin, who in the past provided legal services to the defendant. The priest told how he fulfilled the request (assignment?) An unnamed FSB officer to warn Charov about the threat of criminal prosecution if he does not change his views. The Observer of the “New” studied the history of the ministry of Eduard Charov and the charges against him.

Village "almshouse"

A shelter for homeless disabled people in the village of Savinovo, who himself calls the "almshouse", opened in the summer of 2012. According to the stories of the wife of Inna preacher, Edward is a prudent robber from the gospel. The first half of his life was immersed in the darkness of crime and drug addiction: he had two conditional terms for hooliganism and robbery, was on the run for 10 years when the court appointed a real term for the third time. In 2005, he survived the clinical death from an overdose of drugs, received paralysis and lay almost without help in his room in the Yekaterinburg hostel.

In a state of helplessness, Edward “cropped” to God - and immediately received the answer: he began to visit the local Protestants who brought the products and talked about Jesus.

Gradually, Charov issued disability, issued crutches, he learned to go again and rushed the way to the local church of Pentecostals. The appeal to faith, as it happens in such cases, was deep and total - soon he moved from the Pentecosts to the Russian Orthodox Church, where he even entered the seminary, which he did not graduate.

He did not accept the “pile of rituals” in the Orthodox tradition and the transformation of the Russian Orthodox Church into a state department. Today, Charov is an outcast Christian, reads the icons, happens in the temple, but does not participate in the sacraments of the Russian Orthodox Church, calling for the literal execution of the biblical commandments “in Protestant”. In the press, it is sometimes mistakenly called "non -Penetest."

During his appeal, Eduard began to help homeless and lonely disabled people: if he saw someone freezing on the street in winter, he invited him to his home. It is clear that the neighbors did not like this, and in 2012, having sold his room, he bought a dilapidated two -story house in Savinov, 30 km from Krasnoufimsk, which “with the help of good people” quickly repaired.

Then he himself helped to build a wooden temple in the village - on this basis he became close to the priest. O. Igor began to help the shelter with food. On the construction of the temple, the son of Charov Vladimir worked, who died at the age of 28 from the defect of the heart. Now his name is bearing a rural playground built with money, which remained from fees for a fine scheduled for Charov under administrative articles in 2023.

Charova’s wards live on the ground floor of the house, and the second was occupied by the owners - Edward and Inna (though recently, the couple live separately - they say that the wife could not withstand her husband’s pacifist rhetoric). This summer, only four disabled people remain in the shelter - three men and a woman. Judging by the number of sleeping places, the "almshouse" is able to accept up to 20 people, and, according to Edward, sometimes so many of them gathered in winter.

With the onset of heat, the majority preferred to return to the usual street life - because in the shelter it is strictly forbidden to drink, smoke, use drugs, behave aggressively, the Bible is being studied and there is an introduction to rural work.

Trampling is a complex phenomenon in which elements of personal misfortune are intertwined, social injustice with a voluntary choice of lifestyle and various kinds of dependencies.

The guests were usually brought to the “almshouse” by social protection-until 2021, ANO “Christ for the sake” was registered at Charov, which he was forced to close due to constant inspections, fines, complex reporting and other bureaucratic problems. I spent almost all the money on the courts, through which I achieved (not always successfully) documents and pensions for wards.

“In the villages, in general, many live without documents,” Karov remarked. Among the remaining guesses of the shelter are two wheelchair users and one blind. Cooperation with the authorities was limited to holding a concert in the district center of Krasnoufimsk, at the expense of which it was planned to buy a minibus, but these funds disappeared somewhere.

With the beginning of its own not only in the administration, but also in the private charitable foundations of the Sverdlovsk region at the Savinovsky preacher, they began to look with cautiously - a dissident and oppositionist. The last laudatory article about the "almshouse" in the local press appeared in June 2022, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the shelter. The emphasis in it was on the fact that the “monastery of mercy” was approved by the Russian Orthodox Church and almost became her project.

A little statistics. Over 13 years of official and unofficial activity of the "almshouse" 260 people passed through it. Most do not maintain contact with Charov, only 5-6 “pupils” managed to socialize. According to Rosstat, approximately 2% of all Russian homeless people passed through a shelter in Savinovo. However, as the Validata research center calculated at the end of 2022, the official number of Russian homeless (approximately 11,600) differs from the real (approximately 2 million 130 thousand) almost 200 (!) Times.

Despite the help of a local priest and philanthropists, Charov was forced to recruit loans to food his wards (his wheelchair only 12,800).

Human life is more expensive

The “confessive stage” of the life of the Savinovsky preacher began in the fall of 2022, with the declaration of partial mobilization. At that moment, he realized that his own was for a long time. In his blog, he placed a pacifist message that his shelter was open to those who do not want to mobilize. Seven people under the age of 30 responded to the ad. They did not particularly linger, quickly finding the work that they take without registration. Eduard refused to call their names “even under torture” and condemned the sin of aboard.

Korov’s pacifist statements on VKontakte first noticed the Federal Security Service of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, which sent materials to Yekaterinburg. In March 2023, local law enforcement officers initiated administrative cases of “discrediting the RF Armed Forces” and inciting hatred. The Krasnoufimsky District Court fined Karova totaling 65 thousand rubles, which is more than the one requested by the prosecutor. According to the preacher, the Krasnoufimian investigator at the interrogation told him about the great prospects of the case: according to the logic of the investigator, no one will ever “just like that” to care for the homeless, which means that they are “sold to the authorities” to finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After the fine, the instructions of different organs rained down on Charov: on the misuse of the site, on the installation of fire alarm, about non -payment of taxes for the provision of social services, etc.

But the owner of the "almshouse" stubbornly did not understand the hints. In the fall of 2023, in his blog, he ironically spoke about the arson of the military enlistment office and posted the abbreviated version of the video message Evgeny Prigozhin of June 23 of the same year. On these facts, a criminal case was opened against Charov under Art. 205.2 (justification of terrorism) and 280.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public actions aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation).

On January 31, 2024, at 5.30 in the morning, security forces with machine guns arrived at his village house, one species of which plunged the spell into a state of shock. Having seated him in the patrol car, the security forces searched the premises of his wife, who was asked about "sponsoring the Armed Forces of Ukraine." Charova was taken to the local administration of the UK, according to his own words, allegedly threatened to send his wife on his and arrest. While in a state of shock, he signed confession (which he now refused in court) and was sent under actual house arrest. Eduard is quite promptly, until the end of the trial, they added to the list of extremists and terrorists of Rosfinmonitoring, his state of health worsened sharply. Inna is forced to engage in the shelter and vast economy in Savinov.

In court, Charov holds firmly and does not admit guilt: “They simply appointed a terrorist from the village to fulfill the plan. There is no corpus delicti! "

One of the witnesses of the prosecution, the veteran of his David Shakhnazarov, explains his rejection of Charov’s position as follows: “He seemed to me, I don’t want to offend anyone, with some religious fanatic.”

Holy Union

The priest Igor Savvateev, who turned out to be a witness to the prosecution, is not considered a “informer” in the diocese, and his contacts with the FSB officer do not look socially condemned - neither in the Russian Orthodox Church, nor in Russia as a whole. This is in the early 90s information about the cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church with the KGB or the service of agents of the Soviet intelligence services in the role of hierarchs sounded sensationally. In the current structure of the state, two departments are so intertwined that any special recruitment or implementation of agents is no longer required. Just what they were required in Soviet times emphasized some residual distance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the investigation system and repression. Now Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov), close to Putin, does not see the problems in the “cooperation” of the church and GB in the “cooperation”: “Well, what?

The priest Igor Savvateev is 53 years old, he has secondary special education. In 1991, he graduated from vocational schools and worked as an installer of telephone networks, studied at Sunday school and at catechizer courses in Yekaterinburg. The priest has served in the dignity since 2001, first in hospital temples, now in rural ones (in addition to Savinovo, he has a parish in the village of Natalinsky). After the completion of the construction of two wooden temples, he was even awarded the church order of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov III degree. According to Eduard Charov, in exchange for help with the construction of the temple, the priest helped the shelter with food, but this was not advertised, because the diocese officially considers the "almshouse" of the "sectarian", and now also the pacifist.

As Fr. Igor in court, a couple of years ago, a familiar FSB officer addressed him with a proposal to warn Charov about future troubles because of his position. The priest called on the preacher not to go beyond charity, but he replied that the commandments of God are above all, and he was ready to suffer for allegiance to commandments.

The priest Savvateev simply “fulfilled obedience”, but in the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church there are many more initiative zealots of the “symphony of the church and state security”. In the first year, Archpriest Sergiy Kandybin, rector of the temple in the village of Telm near Irkutsk, became famous for his own year. He wrote where the application for a local resident and entrepreneur Sergei is a coal, who shared his “pro -Ukrainian views” with the priest. Later, the Archpriest was justified by the fact that he considered the coal to the “Ukrainian saboteur”, although this is a fairly famous person in the village, a former deputy. The case was limited to a fine.

The recent history with the participation of the warlike Moscow Archpriest Andrei Tkachev-by the way, was more resonant, is, by the way, a millionaire blogger. In November last year, the police detained right in his temple - the Trinity in Khokhlah - the parishioner Alexei Sevastyanenko, who tried to remind Tkachev of the pacifist commandments of the Gospel. The parishioner assumes that the police were called by the guards of the Archpriest at his direction.

Returning to the Urals, we can recall the Verkhotursky monastery of the Yekaterinburg diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose complaints appeared in the case of the “schismatic” Hieromonk Nikandra (Pinchuk), who opposed his. The list of such examples can be continued for a long time.

In conditions of tight integration of the two systems, when it is already stupid to talk about some kind of “separation of the church from the state”, believers with a pacifist position have to be especially careful.

The church environment is traditionally more sensitive to dissent and is able to identify such nuances in the interpretation of commandments and reading liturgical texts that are inaccessible to unavailable investigators.