SBU confirms use of UOC hierarchs as "exchange fund" for return of captives

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has officially confirmed that some representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are being used as an “exchange fund” for the return of Ukrainian citizens from Russian captivity. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the SBU has facilitated the return of 6,266 people, with some of them being released precisely due to the exchange for “odious churchmen.”

Glavkom reports that the Security Service of Ukraine, responding to the publication’s request, specified that from 2022 to 2025, 6,266 citizens were returned from Russian captivity. The SBU emphasized that the exchanges of clergymen of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church take place “with their voluntary consent and taking into account the legal mechanisms provided for by Article 84-1 of the Criminal Code (“Release from serving a sentence in connection with the transfer of a convicted person for exchange as a prisoner of war”) and Article 201-1 of the Criminal Procedure Code (“Cancellation of preventive measures”)”.

At the same time, the agency refrained from disclosing details of the organization, plans and methods of the intelligence service’s activities, citing the sensitivity of the topic and the need to preserve the exchange process. Glavkom’s request also concerned information about possible requests from the Russian side for the exchange of specific clergymen under investigation in Ukraine, such as Metropolitan Pavel (Lebed), the former vicar of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; metropolitan Arseniy (Yakovenko), the vicar of the Holy Assumption Svyatogorsk Lavra; Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko), the Metropolitan of Zaporizhzhya and Melitopol of the UOC; and Metropolitan Theodosiy (Snigirev), the head of the Cherkasy diocese of the UOC.

The SBU recalled that since 2014, the Joint Center for Coordination of Search and Release of Prisoners of War, as well as illegally imprisoned persons who suffered from aggression against Ukraine has been operating with its participation. The Center works closely with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights and other state structures of the Security and Defense Sector.

We shall remind you that on July 2, 2025, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on the termination of Ukrainian citizenship of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry. The SBU refers to the fact that Metropolitan Onuphrius in 2002 received citizenship of the Russian Federation, but allegedly did not inform the Ukrainian state authorities about it. At the same time, according to the SBU, he “continued to enjoy” the rights of a Ukrainian citizen. Later, the head of state actually recognized that the government’s actions against His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine were part of a targeted policy against people whom the authorities consider “linked to Russia”.