I was sued for publishing 2022 - Metropolitan Jonathan

Metropolitan of Tulchyn and Bratslav Ionafan (Yeletskikh) told about the charges he was accused of by the courts in Ukraine and what he was actually sentenced to imprisonment for. The bishop said that among the charges, he was even charged with church analytical publication, which he wrote in 2022. The Metropolitan’s interview is published by the website Patriarchia.ru.

“I think the real reason for the sentence is my position on the Ukrainian schism. I have repeatedly criticized it in public speeches. In Ukraine it is now forbidden to criticize the church schism and Patriarch Bartholomew. To state publicly that schismatics do not have canonical chorotonies is a criminal offense: Article 161, the so-called “violation of equal rights of citizens”. The SBU has its own experts, they issue a fictitious “linguistic expertise” that you “incited enmity”. And on this ‘fake’ basis dozens of criminal cases and verdicts are fabricated, including against bishops and clergy,” — the hierarch said.

The Metropolitan added that one of the indictments was based on his analytical publication “With an open helmet, without a visor. Notes on the margins of recent events in the Orthodox world,” in which he criticized the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine.

“On January 3, 2022, I published on the diocesan website an article titled “With an open helmet, without a visor. Notes on the margins of recent events in the Orthodox world” criticizing the Church schism and the actions of Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine. I wrote that the historical acts on the transfer of the Kiev Metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate were signed by Patriarch Dionysius and the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1686 and are not subject to revision. That the real territory of the historical Kiev Metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople occupied hardly a third of modern Ukraine. That the east and south of Ukraine — huge territories! — never belonged to the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople, and that all dioceses there were historically created by the Russian Church. That the self-sacred schismatics recognized by Constantinople without re-ordering do not have canonical chiarotonies and the grace of episcopacy. And that the pressure that Patriarch Bartholomew has exerted on other Local Churches, such as Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, to get the Ukrainian schism recognized is unacceptable. This publication of mine was one of the counts of the prosecution, and I also received a guilty verdict on it. In general, the verdict incriminated me with everything in a row. Even my long-standing poems about Russia and the Russian Church (and I wrote the same poems about Ukraine), and publications of the Russian media in support of me,” — Metropolitan Jonathan added.