A Russian Orthodox priest has been arrested over a 2014 photograph in which he is shown with a Ukrainian flag, according to the cleric.
Nikolai Savchenko posted on social media that police officers stormed his church in St Petersburg during Sunday service to detain him.
He was sentenced to 14-days in custody on a charge of displaying an ‘extremist’ symbol, according to court documents quoted by St Petersburg-based news website Fontanka.
The image in question — which was taken in the same year as Russia's annexation of Crimea — shows Savchenko on a busy Russian street wearing a black cassock and pectoral cross while holding a Ukrainian flag featuring the country’s coat of arms.
Savchenko posted the photo of him on the Russian social media platform VKontakte, alongside a quote from the first chapter of Kings in the Bible: “Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren.”
The Ukrainian trident is a banned symbol in Russia because of its connotation with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which the country’s Supreme Court declared extremist in September 2022.
The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches with an estimated 90 million members, strongly backs the invasion of Ukraine.
Under Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, the church has ostracised dozens of clergymen who have defied its official line.
Last year, Moscow priest Dmitry Safronov was suspended from clerical duties and ordered to serve three years of ‘penance’ after leading a memorial service at the grave of late Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
Nevertheless, Ksenia Luchenko, an expert in the Russian Orthodox Church and a former fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, said Savchenko's arrest was unique.
She said: “If this is true, then this is the first case of detention of an active cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church who was not banned and not defrocked.”
