For a year and a half I have been held in custody. And over this year and a half I have had, I think, around 200 court hearings already. At my arrest they told me: "You might run off somewhere, so we are arresting you." Well, if I had been caught at the Polish or Romanian border, that would have been understandable. But when they said this to me inside the walls of the SIZO — that there is a suspicion that I might flee…
I am in need of treatment, of urgent cardiac surgery, and I ask that I be given the chance to be in Kyiv.
When I was admitted to the IVS (a temporary holding facility), it was recorded that my blood pressure was 186 over 106. On 30 October, during the hearing, you called an ambulance here, which diagnosed me with a hypertensive crisis and gave me hot magnesia. And then they said: "Let him lie down for half an hour." It was right there in your office, in your presence. That cannot possibly be faked! They injected me with hot magnesia, and then sent me back to the court hearing, which went on until midnight.
Today I felt unwell as well. I asked to be taken to the hotel. I took my medicines, but even so my blood pressure was 200 over 110. An ambulance came. I was taken to hospital. I had never had such blood pressure before. God is my witness — for the sake of my flock, who came here to support me, I held on as long as I could and did not show that I was unwell. Today I felt worse than I ever have in my life.
They brought me on a gurney right up to the bed in the ward. They gave me a hot injection, magnesia, put me on a drip, gave me a sedative. At the hospital they told me: "Do not get up under any circumstances." Then they brought me a container for tests, wrote down my first name and surname, and said: "Tomorrow morning you will give samples for tests…"
But about me they told the doctor: "The moment you admit him, you will be dismissed." He ran up and down the corridor shouting: "Why do I need this? Take him away at once!" I was taken out of the hospital, again on a gurney, and put into a car. At that moment my blood pressure was 180 over 100 and my pulse was 128 beats a minute. In such a "stable" condition I was discharged and told to be brought to the court.
I was not going to flee anywhere and I am not going to — as the prosecution claims. Where would I flee in such a condition, all the more so since I have no documents on me at all.
I ask that this madness be stopped and that I be allowed at least to get some treatment, because a year and a half has already passed, and especially in these last days, when I had to spend the nights without undressing, since in the cell it was only +13 degrees.
For 33 years I have laboured as a priest in Ukraine, and of those 30 years as superior of the Sviatohirsk Lavra. If I am an enemy of Ukraine, then how can ten members of the Verkhovna Rada vouch for me? If I am an enemy of Ukraine, then why do so many soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine support me?..
I, Your Honour, earnestly ask you to let me leave here not for the SIZO, because I will not endure it, but for Kyiv, to undergo treatment there. So that no doctor runs about the hospital saying: "Take him away! Why do I need him?" I want to go to doctors who will not throw me out of the hospital while I am ill. As a human being I have the right to protect my health and my life. All the more so since, as the people who come to support me have shown, it is something I still need.
So many people have come these days to support me! Not a single person in these days has come to support the prosecutor. Not one. Thousands of people expressed their support for me on the internet within an hour…
Understand that these too are the people of Ukraine, for whose sake I have lived and live, for whose sake I want to live and serve here. I do not want to flee anywhere. People came to me and said: "Sign the agreement and we will exchange you." I do not want that. I want to be here. Here is my flock. Here are my brethren. Here are my sisters, my spiritual children. Here are my lads from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who have never renounced me, and I will never renounce them, because they are mine.
And all this madness will come to an end. God willing! But this disgrace, which they have staged in putting me on trial…
I, Your Honour… It is hard for me to speak. I will probably now be bringing my word to a close.
When we were taking in 3 to 5 thousand refugees a day at our place, feeding them, including people from Bakhmut, Debaltseve, Yenakiieve, who wished to remain on Ukraine's side, for some reason no one then considered me an enemy of Ukraine.
The whole world supports me: from Western Europe, from America, from Australia, and words of support come from everywhere when such a shameful practice is being carried out against me in Ukraine… People pray for me all over the world.
By the way, I am speaking to you in Ukrainian, even though it has been said more than once that I was born in Karelia, in the Russian Federation… It is to my credit that, though I was born there, I kept the Ukrainian language. And I can not only speak it, but also read and write it.
The Ukrainian people are for me the people of God. They are my many-million flock, from West to East. A flock that I have never renounced.
I was told that I would continue my criminal activity if I were released. What activity? I have served as a priest for 30 years. Together with the brethren we restored the Sviatohirsk Lavra — the third lavra of Ukraine, to which — it was an honour — ambassadors were brought to be shown that we have a new lavra and that we have a constitutional state where the right to profess religion is respected.
When we were shelled for five months, with strikes every day, we lived in the cellars, and no one knew whether we were alive or not; we did not live in those cellars and use humanitarian aid for nothing — we served in the lavra every day. The services were not interrupted for a single day. We served one Liturgy in the caves for those who are afraid, and another in the Dormition Cathedral for those who are not afraid, while the windows of the cathedral were blown out every week. And we prayed not for someone or other, but for the people of Ukraine.
People did not stop coming to us after Sviatohirsk was de-occupied. People called us from the Rivne region, the Vinnytsia region… To the Rivne region and to Bukovyna, in this war, coffins came from the front; people came to us to pray, and we were like family to them. Why family? Because I never divided people into West and East. For me they are all my flock.
That is why an eastern lavra came to be, and refugees fled to us, placing their last hope in the lavra. When they were needed by no one, they understood that they were needed by the Mother of God in the lavra. And we carried out our ministry in the lavra: we understood that the people had come not to us, but to the Mother of God, to Her house, and that we were only servers whose task was to receive these people worthily.
I did not flee anywhere. Since 2014 I could have fled. I was pressured to join the OCU. In 2015 they portrayed me as a colonel of the FSB, and wrote that Viktor Yanukovych had supposedly been hiding at my place and that we had supposedly concealed his money… The things they wrote! And that I was waiting… Well, what kind of "waiter" is this, who cannot be driven out of Ukraine, who goes to court to have his Ukrainian citizenship restored and does not want to leave Ukraine for anywhere?
Since 2014 I could have fled, but I did not flee anywhere. I buried soldiers, I baptised little children, I cared for paralysed old women who had been brought to us at the Sviatohirsk Lavra. Together with the brethren and sisters, as far as I could, I tried to labour and to fulfil my priestly vow not to leave my place of ministry without a blessing.
I was and I remain a metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. I was insulted for being unemployed: I was and I remain the superior of the third lavra in Ukraine. Of 300 monasteries it is the third in honour.
And His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy, together with all the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, appealed to the President with a request to release me, when they heard that I had been arrested again after I had already been released on bail. And all of Ukraine would put its name to their appeal.
Well, you saw it yourself: around the court there is not a single enemy of mine. Everyone only supports me. I do not know how I will repay the people. But I have God and the Mother of God, to Whom I have devoted my life. For this love towards me, They will reward in full measure the people who have supported and support me.
I thank you, Your Honour, for bearing with me, for working so hard here in the courtroom as well. And I earnestly ask you: let me go to Kyiv simply to get some treatment. I do not intend to carry on any criminal activity or whatever else is ascribed to me… I do not intend to flee anywhere — where could I flee without a passport and without a travel passport? I do not have a single document. And besides, flee — who needs me, and where?! The people who need me are here.
I came to Ukraine in 1992 and was ordained here, in Ukraine — as a deacon, and as a priest, and as a bishop, and I was raised to the rank of metropolitan. More than once I have been told that I am from Russia. But I lived less of my own life there than in Ukraine: 33 of all my years I have spent in Ukraine. And I do not intend to leave here for anywhere. Whatever is offered to me, whatever agreements they tell me to sign about an exchange…
I do not admit even part of my guilt. There is none. It is all made up, all fabricated. What is more — it is stage-managed: I had not yet been released on bail, and already a week beforehand a rehearsal was under way of how they would detain me.
Here sits the soldier Sashko — he is the only one here, but many lads of the Armed Forces of Ukraine stand behind me. If one were to call together all the lads of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who used to come to us at the lavra, who said that had it not been for Vladyka they would have lost their minds — to call them together so that all of them gathered here, then you would not have enough benches, nor halls, nor corridors.
In these days there has not been a single person, not even a paid one, who would stand with a placard outside the court against me. On the contrary: thousands of people are expressing their support for me on the internet.
People invite me: "Vladyka, Transcarpathia is waiting for you…" How I love Bukovyna, the people of Bukovyna… My forebears came from the Rivne region, from Volyn, back in the seventeenth century.
I am flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of this people. I, unworthy as I am, have the honour to be called the spiritual pastor of this people. If my flock does not renounce me, I cannot leave here for anywhere.
If all who support me in Ukraine could gather together, there would not be enough space to hold them.
Therefore I ask you, Your Honour, to heed the voice of the people of Ukraine. In their name you will be pronouncing my sentence. And the people of Ukraine support me.
Grant me the honour — for me it will be an honour! — of remaining in Ukraine, and give me the chance to get some treatment.
You did not see it: when I was sitting here — how many people I supported, who came, who came with their little children… I did not let it show that I was unwell, so as not to distress them once again.
They all need me. They are loved by me.
I earnestly ask, Your Honour, by the decision of the court, give me a little more time to live with the Ukrainian people… I love them! And that is all.
Comments