The ruling of the Chechelivskyi District Court of Dnipro of 6 December 2025, which merged case No. 243/11154/25 with case No. 243/4706/24 and extended Metropolitan Arseniy’s custody to 3 February inclusive, was left unchanged by the Dnipro Court of Appeal, sitting in Kryvyi Rih on 5 January 2026, which dismissed the appeals of three defence lawyers. Its text says no cassation appeal lies: the appeal ruling is final.
The lawyers moved to postpone the hearing but, the appeal ruling says, they had been duly notified and the hearing had earlier been postponed at the defence’s request, so the motions were refused. The lawyer for the sitting at 13:00 was appointed by the free legal aid centre at the panel’s direction: the ruling on bringing in a defence lawyer notes that none of the Metropolitan’s four defence lawyers, among them the authors of the appeals, had come. The Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra, where Metropolitan Arseniy is superior, said on its website that the sitting set for 24 December was moved to 5 January because one of the lawyers had filed an addition to the appeal.
The defence, the ruling says, held that the ruling of 6 December was unreasoned and that the merger breached procedural law. The panel disagreed: in its view the ruling answers each argument, both proceedings were before one court, and their transfer to the previously determined panel was made, among other grounds, under part 2 of Article 334 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It did not assess arguments that the charges were groundless: under Article 422-1 of that Code an appeal court checks the lawfulness and soundness of a preventive measure, not proof of guilt.
The panel agreed with the first-instance court’s finding that the risks had not diminished. One lawyer argued that Article 436-2 of the Criminal Code is not among the offences for which part 4 of Article 183 of the Code lets a court leave bail unset even under martial law. The panel cited that provision, under which a court may decline to set a bail amount in proceedings for, among others, offences under Articles 114-2 and 436-2, and called the arguments for a milder preventive measure unfounded.
Sources: Unified State Register of Court Decisions — ruling of the Dnipro Court of Appeal of 5 January 2026, full text; ruling of the same day on bringing in a defence lawyer; Svyatogirsk Holy Dormition Lavra, 1 January 2026.
