A three-judge panel of the Dnipro Court of Appeal, sitting on 17 December 2025 at the court’s premises in Kryvyi Rih, heard the appeals of three defence lawyers of Metropolitan Arseniy against the ruling of the investigating judge of the Sobornyi District Court of Dnipro of 3 November 2025 (case No. 201/13688/25), which ordered custody for 38 days, to 10 December, with no bail amount set. The appeals were dismissed and the ruling left unchanged. The appeal ruling states that it is final and cannot be appealed in cassation. According to the ruling, the Metropolitan, a defence lawyer, the prosecutor and a People’s Deputy took part in the hearing by video link.
One of the lawyers, as the ruling sets it out, asked for bail of 80 subsistence minimums for able-bodied persons. The panel rejected the arguments about the composition of the court and about the impossibility of custody on health grounds: the first, the ruling says, are refuted by the case file, the second are not supported by documents. It agreed with the investigating judge’s conclusions that the suspicion was reasonable and that the risks existed, noting that guilt is not decided at this stage.
At the same time the panel found well founded the arguments that the ruling of 3 November gives no reasons for refusing to set bail or for distrusting those who offered surety for the Metropolitan. Part 4 of Article 183 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the ruling says, did not relieve the investigating judge of the duty to consider an alternative measure; in the panel’s conclusion, there were no grounds for not applying that provision.
However, the ruling says, the prosecutor gave the appeal court documents showing that the pre-trial investigation had ended and the indictment had been sent to court, and that the Chechelivskyi District Court of Dnipro, by a ruling of 6 December 2025, had joined this proceeding to another one and extended custody to 3 February 2026 with no bail amount set. So, reviewing the ruling of 3 November within the pre-trial investigation period, the panel could not set bail; on the same grounds it refused the motion of a People’s Deputy and of the Metropolitan himself for personal surety, and it saw no grounds for a measure milder than custody.
The appeals, the Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra said on its website, began to be heard on 9 December and the hearing continued on 17 December.
Sources: Unified State Register of Court Decisions, ruling No. 132854070, 17 December 2025; Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra, 18 December 2025.
