Expert: Authorities imprison UOC bishops to force the rest to join the OCU

Metropolitan Arseny. Photo: screenshot from the YouTube channel of the Sviatohirsk Lavra

Nikolay Mitrokhin, a research fellow at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen, stated that Zelensky decided to systematically imprison all UOC hierarchs in order to coerce those remaining free into "voluntarily joining" the OCU. He published his reaction to the news of the arrest of the abbot of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, Metropolitan Arseny, on his Facebook.

The expert compared the persecutions of the UOC under Zelensky to the Stalin era, and the accusations against the bishop appear in the same style: "It remains only to wait for confessions of working for three foreign intelligence agencies and digging a tunnel from the archbishop's residence to Donetsk," Mitrokhin wrote.

The religious scholar spoke about the significance and influence of Metropolitan Arseny for the UOC and noted that he practically built a large monastery community from scratch and restored the largest monastery complex. Mitrokhin also shared his personal impressions from meeting with the abbot of the Sviatohirsk Lavra in 2021. According to the German expert, Bishop Arseny "valued Ukraine precisely for the opportunity of religious freedom."

"He, who survived the siege by the RF Armed Forces, whose residence was destroyed by Russian artillery, has repeatedly been tried to be provoked by activist-provocateurs during two years of war, who approached Sviatohirsk with video cameras, but it seems they failed to achieve to anything from him. Vladyka is not the one to abandon his beliefs," Mitrokhin concluded.

As the UOJ reported, on April 25, the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor's Office announced that the court had chosen preventive measures for the abbot of the Holy Assumption Sviatohirsk Lavra, Metropolitan Arseny, in the form of detention for 60 days without the right to bail.

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