According to the Rights Group Forum 18, imprisoned Ukrainian Orthodox priests were sent 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from a Ukrainian parish under Russian occupation to the Harding camp in Russia.
Rev. Kostiantyn vyacheslavovich Maksimov, 41, lost the appeal of the court’s closing conviction by the Russian-controlled Supreme Court, the group said. He was deported on February 11 from the Diocese of Tokumak, the Russian-controlled Zaporidia region, located in a labor camp in the Saratov region of Russia, on February 11.
“The Russian occupation authorities have repeatedly tried to put pressure on both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OCU) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church related to the Moscow Patriarchy (UOC), and have joined the new parish,” Forum 18 explained at a press conference. “The patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is unilaterally established in the occupied Ukrainian territory (as such). Both the OCU and UOC clergy… disappeared after they refused.”
Russian occupation forces first arrested Maximov in May 2023. They detained him in the Ukrainian city of Melitpol, which ruled him over Russia before moving him to Investigative Prison 2 in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea in February 2024. Prosecutors alleged that Maximov used the internet to send adjustments to the internet for security deployments in Russia, Germany, Germany.
The Zaporizhzhia District Court, which was all ruled by Russia in the Crimean Supreme Court, sentenced the priest to 14 years in prison on August 2.
“This is a secret case and the appeal hearing will be closed,” Judge Melekhin’s assistant, Yekaterina Kiryanova, told Forum 18 in October from the same court.
A judge in the Court of Appeals, chaired by Pavel Melekhin, agreed to reduce the priest’s sentence by eight months due to the time spent in unauthorized detention between his first arrest in May 2023 and his official arrest in February 2024.
“The punishment assigned to KV Maksimov is fair,” the court’s decision, seen by Forum 18, stated, “in relation to the fact that the Judiciary Committee has not seen any basis for agreeing to the argument of appeals for it being softened or severely punished.”
The court ruled from the previous lower court ruling that it would exclude reference to Maximov’s alleged spying as being carried out “on the conditions of armed conflict and military action.”
Maximov did not want the UOC Berdyansk parish to join the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the allegations on October 18, 2023 by Artyom Sharlay, head of the Russian occupation department, an ethnic, religion and Cossack organization of Russia’s social communications department. The department is part of the Internal Policy Department of Russia-controlled Zaporidia Regional Management.
The relocation of Maximov to Russia violates the Geneva Convention (IV) on the protection of civilians during wartime in regard to civilian rights in territory occupied by another state (called “protected persons”). Article 76 states, “The protected persons accused of a crime will be detained in the occupied country and, if convicted, they shall serve their sentence there.”
An October 1 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded human rights abuses in Ukraine from June 2023 to August 2024.
“OHCHR documented cases of arbitrary detention when occupation authorities detained people for what appears to be the legal exercise of their expression and freedom of religion and belief,” the report added. “In some of these cases, the affected people shared information with the OHCHR based on secrets.
Russia claimed that it illegally annexed parts of Ukraine during a 2022 Russian invasion. Forum 18. Authorities imposed Russian criminal and administrative law law later that year, affecting the local Ukrainian population, including people such as Jehovah’s Witness clergy, including other people, including Jehovah’s Witnesses clergy, including other Orthodox priests, the imprisonment of mainstream protesters.
Among the imprisoned Orthodox clergymen was Pastor Stepan Podolchak, who died on February 13, 2024 in an area of Russian occupied area in the village of Karanchak, Ukraine. Authorities put him in a bag above his head and took him barefoot, and according to Forum 18 he insisted he needed to come for questions.
Forum 18 said that he tried to contact the special department of the labor camp where Maximov is incarcerated, but the commissioner refused to help. He was 412815 Saratovskaya Oblast, Krasnoarmeysky Raion, Pos. Kamensky, ul. Zerenaya d. 20A, 10-II Otryad, FKU Ispravitelnaya Koloniya No. 23 Ufsin Rossii Po Saratovskoi Oblasti, Russian Federation, according to Rights Group.
