Two murders, one silence
Zelensky condemned the killing of a Catholic priest in Poland the very same day. A month earlier, a UOC monk was murdered at the Sviatohirsk Lavra – and the president has remained silent ever since.
On September 24, 2026, in the Polish city of Jarosław, a citizen of Ukraine, a former soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, attacked a convent of Benedictine sisters and killed a Catholic priest. That very evening, the crime was condemned by Vladimir Zelensky. Shortly afterward, the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland issued a statement of its own. Zelensky’s same-day condemnation and call for a thorough investigation were publicly reported.
And rightly so, one might think. When a citizen of your country commits such an atrocity abroad, the head of state should respond.
But there is another question.
A month earlier, on August 23, Monk Varsonofy (Turianskyi) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was killed at the Sviatohirsk Lavra. He was killed on Ukrainian soil, behind Ukrainian army lines. Yet neither Zelensky, nor his Office, nor the Interior Ministry, nor the SBU has publicly responded to the killing to this day.
Why, then, does a Catholic priest murdered in Poland merit condolences from the Ukrainian president, while an Orthodox monk murdered in Ukraine does not?
Let us try to understand.
How Poland responded – and how Kyiv responded
First, let us recall what happened in Jarosław. At about 9:30 a.m., a 31-year-old Ukrainian entered the monastery grounds through open gates and began attacking people with a knife. Five people were injured, three of them Catholic priests. One of them later died in the hospital. The attacker was detained at the scene, and the mayor of Jarosław convened an emergency crisis team with the participation of the voivode the same day.
Contemporary reports confirm that one person was killed and four wounded in the attack.
More details emerged later. The 31-year-old Ihor M. had previously served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fought at the front. He reportedly held Ukrainian and German passports, as well as a Polish PESEL number allowing him to obtain temporary protection status.
Poland’s top officials responded almost immediately. Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote: “The Jarosław killer is in the hands of the Polish police. Investigative measures are underway. The perpetrator is a Ukrainian citizen. He will face the full severity of Polish law. I share the pain of the loved ones of the victims of this brutal attack.”
President Karol Nawrocki was even more forceful: “In the face of such acts, the state must be strong, act swiftly and relentlessly within the law... The task of the state is to ensure the safety of its citizens.”
One may have different views of Nawrocki’s tone, but his central point was clear: the state is responsible for people’s safety. When a priest is murdered in a monastery, it is a matter for the state, not merely for the police.
Zelensky responded to the killing in Poland that same day: “A horrific crime was committed at the Benedictine Sisters’ Abbey in Jarosław by a citizen of Ukraine. We are shocked by this evil... We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased.”
He continued: “The perpetrator of this evil must face full responsibility under the law. We expect a swift and thorough investigation into all the circumstances. It is painful that people are capable of such horrific crimes. Justice must prevail.” Українська правда
The Ukrainian Embassy in Poland did not remain silent either: “We strongly condemn the brutal attack... We consider all manifestations of violence unacceptable. It is especially painful that such a tragedy occurred in a place that should be a space of prayer and mercy.” The diplomats stressed that “there can be no justification for violence or attacks against people.”
The following day, Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar was already telling journalists where the suspect was being held and what condition he was in. The Embassy’s public condemnation was also reported at the time.
It is not difficult to understand why Kyiv reacted so quickly. Poland is a key ally, relations are already complicated, and now the killer was a former Ukrainian serviceman – something Polish politicians were already highlighting. Silence would have carried too high a reputational cost for Ukraine.
The author’s contention is that the speed of the response reflected not only sympathy, but political calculation. UOC believers inside Ukraine, by contrast, have neither Poland’s Confederation party nor a Polish president capable of putting pressure on Bankova Street – and, in this view, there has consequently been no comparable response.
No one is criticizing Zelensky for what he said. Quite the opposite: those were the right words, spoken at the right time.
The question is why he could not find the same words for his own citizen – a UOC monk murdered at the Lavra.
The diplomats wrote that it was especially painful when tragedy struck “a place that should be a space of prayer and mercy.” They were speaking about a Polish monastery.
No Ukrainian official wrote anything comparable about the Sviatohirsk Lavra.
Sviatohirsk: a month of silence
At around 11 a.m. on August 23, a group of people attacked residents of the Sviatohirsk Lavra near St. Nicholas Church in the monastery’s upper grounds. Monk Varsonofiy (Turianskyi) died from a through-and-through gunshot wound to the head and neck. Monk Gregory was wounded, as was Andrii Kyriienko, who was living at the monastery. The UOC reported the attack that same day, and the Lavra later said the forensic medical certificate identified a gunshot wound to the head and neck as the cause of Varsonofiy’s death. A criminal investigation remains underway.
Kyriienko spoke about the attack in the days that followed. According to his account, he was assaulted after responding “incorrectly” to the greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” with the words “Glory to God.” The article argues that the circumstances suggest Monk Varsonofy paid with his life for similarly “incorrect” words.
Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge) later put it this way: “That monk could easily have saved his life if he had obeyed his killers’ demand. But he did not. He answered as a Christian: glory belongs to God alone.”
Of course, the investigation into the Sviatohirsk killing formally continues. But the article argues that the theory of a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group is difficult to reconcile with a statement by Andrii Biletskyi, commander of the 3rd Army Corps, a figure hardly known for sympathy toward the UOC: “There has never been a Russian soldier in Sviatohirsk... The city of Sviatohirsk lies within the defensive sector of the 60th Mechanized Brigade of the 3rd Army Corps. It is a rear area of our corps.”
In other words, the monk was killed behind Ukrainian army lines, in territory controlled by the Ukrainian state.
In Jarosław, the killer was a former Ukrainian serviceman. In Sviatohirsk, the article says, a monk was killed by people in military clothing behind Ukrainian lines. The president spoke about the former soldier who committed a crime abroad on the very same day.
About the people in uniform who killed a monk at home – not a word.
Can that simply be coincidence?
Former Ukrainian MP Ihor Mosiychuk put his interpretation of the Sviatohirsk killing bluntly: “It sends a signal to the military that nobody cares – you can do whatever you want.”
Where did the hatred come from?
It is hard to believe that Zelensky simply failed to notice a tragedy in a small frontline city. More likely, the problem lies elsewhere. To honestly condemn the Sviatohirsk murder would mean having to say where the atmosphere came from in which a man in a cassock could be killed outside a church.
And that is something the authorities clearly do not want to do. Because that atmosphere was years in the making. And it was created by people who were anything but marginal.
Let us remember Kvartal 95 – the studio Zelensky himself once founded and headed. In late 2022, presenters on its Bayraktar News program used obscene language to insult UOC clergy and read out a mock “price list”: “spit at an MP priest – 20 hryvnias”; “hit him on the left cheek and automatically on the right – 100 hryvnias.”
Some people found it funny.
But on January 2, 2023, a man burst into a UOC church in Vinnytsia and slashed the rector across the throat with a straight razor. Beneath the Kvartal video, one user later wrote: “His blood is on your hands too.”
Government officials also spoke out in sweeping terms. Oleksii Danilov, then secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said: “This institution [the UOC – Ed.] contained many representatives of the so-called intelligence community of the Russian Federation.”
Note the distinction: he was not speaking about specific individuals whose guilt had been established in court, but about the Church as an institution. When the official responsible for national security speaks this way during wartime, millions of believers can effectively find themselves branded without trial. The rhetoric was then picked up by lawmakers, “experts,” television “religious scholars,” and bloggers.
Gradually, it was reduced to three labels: “sect,” “Muscovites,” and “FSB in cassocks.”
A recent Kyiv FM broadcast offers a telling example. Journalist Bohdan Butkevych, appearing on the program Kyiv Speaks. War with activist Maryna Koval, discussed the question: “Is there a chance to ban the Russian Church in Ukraine?”
Speaking about UOC believers, he said: “I have my own score to settle with them – with that scum who pretend to be Christians even though they are not.”
Butkevych said the point of the broadcast was to determine whether it was possible to “cut off the head of this hydra.” He called the clergy “bastards in black cassocks.” By the end of the program, Butkevych said he would gladly serve as executioner at a trial of the UOC.
And this was not 2022, when emotions were running white-hot in the first weeks of the war. Butkevych said all this after the killing at the Lavra.
Such statements are nothing new for him. Back in 2014, appearing on Hromadske.TV, he spoke of “a certain category of people who simply need to be killed.”
Twelve years have passed. He is still on the air, and no state institution has publicly responded to those words.
Imagine for a moment that a journalist on Kyiv radio called OCU members, Catholics, Greek Catholics, Jews, or Muslims “scum” and volunteered to become their executioner. How long would it take for the National Council, prosecutors, or perhaps even the president himself to respond? Hardly more than a day.
But when such things are said about UOC Orthodox Christians, no one bats an eye.
Metropolitan Timotheos of Bostra of the Jerusalem Patriarchate put the danger this way: “When people are taught for years to see an enemy in their baptized brother, sooner or later someone will inevitably carry that idea to its ultimate conclusion.”
The Odesa Eparchy of the UOC put it more simply: “Words have consequences.”
And there is the answer to why the authorities remain silent about Sviatohirsk. If they seriously condemn the murder of Fr. Varsonofy, they will have to admit that it has a prehistory.
And there are too many familiar faces in that prehistory – from former Kvartal colleagues to the former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
It is far easier to pretend nothing happened.
But when the head of state remains silent in a situation like this, that silence is still perceived as a signal.
The Signal Was Understood Correctly
Mosiychuk, let us recall, called this silence a "signal to the military." Someone may argue with that. But what is happening in practice speaks for itself.
First, mobilization. Reports appear almost daily of UOC priests being detained by TCC officers. At the same time, we constantly stress that the Church does not demand any privileges for its priests. This is about equal treatment and about the fact that, according to the canons, a clergyman cannot take up arms (which is well known in the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience as well). Under the Geneva Conventions, military chaplains are considered non-combatants. Yet in Ukraine, UOC priests are sent to the front without regard for either their rank or their cassock.
Second, the information space. Butkevich is not an exception here; he simply says aloud what others say in veiled form. When on a capital's radio station they discuss how to "cut off the hydra's head," and the news habitually says "Moscow priests," people form a simple picture: these people are outlaws, and no one will stand up for them.
This was warned about by Bishop Job of Stuttgart. According to him, the reprisal against a representative of the Church that "in Ukraine has for many years stood on the brink of a state ban" takes us "back to the times of early Christianity, when representatives of a religio illicita — a prohibited religion — could and should be destroyed for the good of the public."
And third, impunity. Almost four years have passed since Vinnytsia. All this time, attacks on UOC priests have become neither a reason for statements from the authorities nor high-profile court cases. The Manager of Affairs of the UOC, Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanych), asked: "Has someone really been given the right to kill with impunity only because another person is 'of the wrong faith'?" There has been no answer from the state for more than a month. And everyone understands this silence perfectly well, including those who have weapons in their hands.
What the Authorities Should Be Reminded Of
The Ukrainian authorities love to talk about the European choice and European values. Well, let us recall what these values say about freedom of conscience.
Article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine guarantees everyone freedom of worldview and religion. Article 24 prohibits privileges or restrictions on the basis of religious beliefs. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which Ukraine has ratified, protects the freedom to manifest one's religion. And the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly stressed that the state must be neutral and impartial toward different confessions and has no right to decide whose faith is "correct." And the simplest point of all: the state exists to protect the lives of its citizens. All citizens, not only those it likes.
In the European Union, to which Ukraine so aspires, they look not only at laws on the prosecutor's office and anti-corruption bodies. They also look at how the state protects minorities. CDU member from Germany
