Russian officials have released a Ukrainian Orthodox priest jailed for 107 days following his conviction on drug charges and a suspended sentence that includes restrictions and monitoring.
The Rev. Feognost Pushkov, 45, was in pre-trial detention for more than three months before his release on Oct. 4 from Investigation Prison No. 2 in Starobilsk, in the Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast in Ukraine, according to rights group Forum 18.
He is a priest in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is linked to the Moscow Patriarchate.
The priest has returned to his village of Prosyanoe near Markivka in Luhansk, where he lives with his elderly and disabled mother, Taisiya, according to Forum 18.
Pushkov likely drew the ire of authorities for posting a YouTube video on May 12, 2022 giving his views on patriotism based on Christian principles against those of Russian Orthodox priests supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian officials searched the priest’s house, alongside examinations of his electronic devices and writings. This allegedly ended with a discovery of a small quantity of cannabis, which Forum 18 stated was “to try to calm his nerves.”
Judge Oksana Shmatko of Markivka District Court in Luhansk on Sept. 16 found the priest guilty of “large scale” drug dealing. A Ukrainian living in occupied Ukraine, he was convicted under Russian Criminal Code Article 228, Part 2 against “Illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, production, processing of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues” on a “large scale.”
Pushkov was given a four-year suspended sentence with three years of restrictions under probation. Since then, he is required to report regularly to officials monitoring him, and his movements are restricted.
The priest is unable to leave home, change his address or work place, or take part in “mass events” without the permission of officials. He is required to report to probation authorities regularly.
Any other conviction incurred during a three-year probation period means Pushkov will be returned to prison, according to Forum 18.
The prosecutor decided not to appeal the sentence, although he had requested a four-year prison sentence for the priest.
After his release, Pushkov on Oct. 5 wrote on his Telegram channel for the first time since being arrested on June 20 about the disquieting experience of celebrating the June 24 Feast of the Holy Spirit in prison rather than a church building.
“For the first time in 34 years, I marked it not in church, not at the liturgy, but in Markivka temporary detention center,” Pushkov wrote, adding he “cried out to God. But ahead of me were a further 107 days of hell. Incredible physical suffering from external conditions was combined with round-the-clock mental torment. And so I left prison, but the poison of hell did not leave me. And will it?”
Christian Daily International previously reported on concerns after Pushkov disappeared from his home in Prosyanoe.
The UOC priest serves the parish of St. Nikolai in Kuryachivka village, within Starobilsk District of Ukraine’s Luhansk Region.
Forum 18 had reported that no one had heard of Pushkov’s whereabouts since June 20, when police summoned the priest, who suffers from stress-induced high blood pressure, and he posted this message on Telegram: “I’m in an ambulance. They want to lock me up at the police [station]. I am between life and death. Help me, everyone who can. My mother won’t survive this.”
