FSB officer faces charges – and an inconvenient detail from his past

An officer of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service defected to the FSB. Photo: FISU Press Service

“Patriotic” media outlets and Telegram channels have widely circulated the news that the SBU has charged FSB officer S. Havrysh over the persecution of two OCU clerics in the occupied part of Donbas. According to investigators, Havrysh forced them to re-register their churches under Russian law and helped send them to a temporary detention center for foreign nationals, from where they were deported to Georgia.

Religious persecution, if it did indeed take place, is unquestionably unacceptable. But there is another detail worth noting. Until 2014, Havrysh was an officer of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service – meaning that after the occupation, he became a traitor. And there were many like him.

Lavra attorney Fr Nikita Chekman has said that around 98% of Ukrainian security-service personnel in Crimea defected to Russia. Yet here is the paradox: no one in Ukraine calls the SBU or the Foreign Intelligence Service institutions of traitors.

When it comes to UOC clergy, however, the approach is somehow entirely different. Isolated criminal cases involving less than 1% of the clergy are solemnly portrayed by the authorities and the media as a threat to national security – and used as grounds for seeking to ban the entire Church.

Yet another reason to take pride in our unprecedented freedom of religion.

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