Ukrainian Priest Arrested for Assisting Illegal Border Crossings

The Prymorskyi District Court of Odesa granted the request of the Security Service of Ukraine and seized a phone that was seized from a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate from the village of Mayaki, who is accused of helping men cross the border illegally.

As noted in the court ruling, 6.1 thousand US dollars were also seized from the priest as money received illegally from a man whom he helped to travel abroad.

According to the case file, the SBU was checking information about the priest's pro-Russian views and found out that he also organized the man's illegal transportation abroad. In particular, he offered the man to transfer his acquaintance to the Transnistrian region of Moldova for a monetary reward of 5 thousand US dollars.

Subsequently, the priest and the man he volunteered to help met in Odesa, where they purchased a diving suit, aqua socks and other necessary things for water behavior, and then went to training with an instructor, and then beyond the established checkpoints in the Republic of Moldova.

Then, the priest in his own car Toyota Carina, avoiding checkpoints with employees of the territorial recruitment center, took the client and another man to a private house, where they were met by a diving instructor to prevent their mobilization.

After that, the priest received a total of 6.1 thousand hryvnias from the clients and they were detained by law enforcement.

Last December, in Odesa, the rector of the church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate faced imprisonment for justifying the Russian occupiers and praising the president of the Russian Federation. During his sermons and conversations with the faithful, the archpriest praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and heroized the Russian occupiers. In addition, the priest tried to justify the war crimes of Russian troops, in particular the shelling of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

In October 2023, law enforcement officers detained three men in Odesa who were suspected of helping conscripts who wanted to evade service to travel abroad.

Кирило Бойко