TWO priests have been held on suspicion of plotting the assassination of Vladimir Putin’s personal confessor.
Two individuals were reportedly hired by Ukraine to assassinate Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, 66, who serves as the Metropolitan of Crimea. The assassination attempt was planned to take place at a monastery in Moscow.
But Orthodox priests Denis Popovich, 27, and Nikita Ivankovich, 28, were nabbed by Putin’s FSB security service.
Both suspects can be seen admitting to their involvement in a video released by the FSB. In the video, one of the men, Popovich, mentioned that the mission assigned to them was to team up with an accomplice and use explosives to eliminate Metropolitan Tikhon.
They now face terrorism charges which could lead to life in jail.
Pro-war Tikhon, the senior Russian Orthodox church figure in occupied Crimea, has likened Putin to Russian emperor Peter the Great.
Popovich, who worked as the bishop’s secretary and is a citizen of Ukraine, is accused of unlawfully accessing the bishop’s Telegram account. Through this access, he allegedly monitored the bishop’s communications and gathered intel on his whereabouts and activities.
In the FSB video, he said he was recruited by Ukraine’s GUR security service, who threatened to kill his relatives.
He and Russian Ivankovich were said to have hatched a plot to blow up the Metropolitan’s quarters at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow.
They had collected explosives and Ukrainian passports from a stash in a forest and were planning to flee Russia after the attack, it was claimed.
But Popovich was arrested on his way to the monastery in January.
Ivankovich said on the video he was recruited by GUR in mid-2024.
He added: “My task was the physical destruction of the Metropolitan of Crimea through the detonation of an improvised explosive device.”
Both men were accused of sending money to Ukraine’s forces since 2022.
