At a preparatory hearing on 15 December 2025 the Chechelivskyi District Court of Dnipro, in the joined criminal proceeding in case No. 243/4706/24, rejected the motion of Metropolitan Arseniy’s defence counsel to replace custody with a personal obligation. In the same ruling it ordered Dnipro Multi-Profile Hospital No. 4, a branch of the Health Care Centre of the State Criminal and Executive Service, to examine the Metropolitan urgently and to report to the court without delay whether, given his illnesses, he can be held in a remand prison and whether he needs urgent surgery.
The defence based the motion on the accused’s grave state of health. Prosecutors asked the court to leave it unexamined, saying his health had already been considered when custody was extended; the court refused that request, noting that the question whether he could be held in the remand prison had not been examined then.
The court accepted the medical documents filed by the defence as confirming chronic illnesses and a need for examination and treatment, but not as proper and admissible proof that he cannot be held in the remand prison; one opinion, it noted, bore no seals. In its view the defence had shown neither a lessening of the risks established in the ruling of 6 December 2025 nor any new circumstances; it ordered the examination, it said, to safeguard the right to medical care and to establish whether custody is possible.
Under the ruling, the refusal may be appealed to the Dnipro Court of Appeal within five days of its announcement. The full text of the ruling is dated 19 December and was opened to the public in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions on 22 December; Suspilne Donbas reported on it on 23 December.
The Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra, whose superior is Metropolitan Arseniy, said on its website that the Metropolitan felt unwell before the hearing and a prison doctor was called, and that the next hearing of the Chechelivskyi court was moved from 19 to 22 December.
Sources: Register of Court Decisions, ruling No. 132589782 (operative part), 15 December 2025; the same register, ruling No. 132729377 (full text), 19 December 2025; Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra, 15 December 2025; Suspilne Donbas, 23 December 2025.
