The Russian state news agency TASS reported end of february a “thwarted terrorist act against Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Simferopol and Crimea.”
Two of his students, graduates of the Sretensky Theological Seminary, have been arrested. As evidence, the FSB published their videos in which the two young men explain how they were recruited by Ukrainian services and how they were supposed to plant an explosive device in the living quarters of the Sretensky Monastery where Metropolitan Tikhon was staying. The two arrested are Nikita Ivankovich and Denis Popovich. They were very close to the metropolitan, with Denis Popovich (of Ukrainian origin) being his secretary and cashier.
Russian human rights organizations reported on them a month ago. Popovich was arrested on January 13 on the way to the Sretensky Seminary for “petty hooliganism” because he was “shouting and speaking obscenely.” He was detained for fifteen days. Then he was charged with a new crime. Nikita Ivankovich, a subdeacon and singer at the Resurrection Church in Moscow, went to visit his classmate in prison, after which his home was also searched. “The shovel used to bury an explosive device in Terletsky Park in Moscow” was found there. The two are accused of “sending money to support the Ukrainian armed forces” in 2022. The Russian media did not report on the reaction of Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) and whether he tried to help his employees. Today, the two graduates of the Sretensky Seminary are accused of “organizing an assassination attempt” against Metropolitan Tikhon. Their acquaintances describe them as pacifists who were “for stopping the war.” They have not hidden their views, their comments on social networks over the past two years have been commented on in Russian pro-war Telegram Ζ-channels (for example, with the eloquent name “Bishop Lucifer”) where they are accused of “propaganda in the seminary of the ideology of the Kiev Nazi regime”. These channels are now publishing photos of their close clergy and friends with a demand that they also be held accountable.
A similar plot unfolded in the Georgian Church several years ago. Then a close associate of Patriarch Ilia – Deacon Georgi Mamaladze – was thrown into prison on charges of “organizing the assassination of the patriarch” by transporting cyanide. Subsequently, the charge was changed to “attempted assassination of a high-ranking official of the patriarchate”, namely the “gray cardinal” Shorena Tetrushavili, but the case remained in the public domain as “attempted assassination of the patriarch”. The case was used to purge the patriarchate of metropolitans considered possible successors to the patriarchal see, as well as their supporters.
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First published in this link of The European Times.
