Archpriest Andrey Lorgus is a well-known Moscow priest, practicing psychologist, anthropologist, rector of the Institute of Christian Psychology, author of books on church and psychological topics, as well as a lecturer and publicist. Since 2018, he has been a retired cleric of the Moscow City Diocese.

He publicly expressed an anti-war position. In 2022, he signed the open appeal of Russian Orthodox clergy calling for an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (signature no. 22).

In September 2022, he condemned the mobilization, urging people “not to take part in the works of darkness.” In 2024, he appeared in a program devoted to the impact of the war on the Church.

On 23 December 2025, the Moscow diocesan court decided to defrock the priest. On 20 February 2026, by Decree No. U-02/23 signed by Patriarch Kirill, his deposition from the priesthood was carried out.

Aleksei Jagiello, a preacher of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Homiel, a Christian activist and promoter of a healthy lifestyle, and a physician by education. Born: 27 January 1984.

In November 2025 it became known that he had been convicted under the article on “facilitating extremist activity.” The Homiel Regional Court found the religious figure guilty under parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code. Details of the charges are unknown. It is presumed that he was prosecuted in connection with the so-called “Belarusian Hajun case”— a monitoring project that tracked the movement of Russian military equipment and troops across the territory of Belarus. The exact sentence is also unclear: he was given either imprisonment or restriction of freedom with assignment to an open-type correctional facility.

On 28 November 2025, he was added to the list of Belarusian citizens, foreign citizens and stateless persons “involved in extremist activity.”

He is detained at the Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 3, Homiel, vul. Knižnaja 1A, 246003, Belarus.

Pastor Pavel Zayakin, born in 1966. Since 1991, he has been an activist of the scouting movement in Siberia. From 1996 to 2017 he lived in the Republic of Khakassia, where he worked on establishing Lutheran congregations. In 1997 he was ordained as a deacon of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. From 2018 to 2020 he served in Ukraine, after which he returned to Siberia.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, he spoke out against the war — delivered anti-war sermons and published anti-war texts on Facebook. As a result, he faced threats from the security services and was forced to emigrate to Estonia in 2022.

On 21 November 2025, Pastor Pavel Zayakin’s name appeared on the updated list of “foreign agents.”

Priest Walerian Dunin-Barkowski, born in 1977, cleric of the St. Nicholas Parish of the Archdiocese of Orthodox Churches of the Russian Tradition in Western Europe.

From 1994 to 1998, he served as a chanter and reader at the Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhovo, Moscow. From 1999 to 2010, he served as an altar attendant and chanter at the Guslitsy Transfiguration Monastery in the Moscow region. Since 2018, he has been living in Germany. In 2019, he completed the catechetical courses of the Berlin-German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. On February 6, 2022, he was ordained deacon by Metropolitan John of Dubna (Renneteau) in the city of Trier, and on June 2, 2022, he was ordained priest in Paris.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has publicly spoken out against the war. In 2023, he became the founder and chairman of the board of the project “Friede Allen e.V.” (“Peace to All”).

On 15 August 2025, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation declared the organization Friede Allen e.V. (“Peace to All”) an “undesirable organization.” Information about this appeared in the official register of the Ministry of Justice on 16 September 2025. As the head of the organization, Dunin-Barkowski faces up to six years of imprisonment under Russian law.

Andrei Voronin — a native of Tolyatti, is a Russian Orthodox believer, activist, and monarchist with a long criminal history. He has previously been prosecuted under several administrative and criminal charges, including drug possession, theft, violent offenses, and incitement of hatred. At various times, he lived in Moscow and in the village of Glukhovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, near the Diveevo Monastery, which he frequently visited.

Voronin is currently incarcerated. In 2020, following a conflict with local authorities over fire safety violations and a post he made on the social network VKontakte, he was charged under terrorism-related legislation and sentenced to 12 years in prison. An additional 2.5 years were later added to his sentence after a physical altercation with a prison staff member.

In December 2024, new criminal charges were brought against him under Article 205 Part 1 (Justification of terrorist activity) and Article 207.3 Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code (Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or other official bodies). The charges stem from conversations he had with cellmates in Penal Colony No. 4 (IK-4) in the Pskov region. These conversations were recorded during his transfer from a prison in the Vladimir region to the Pskov facility in late May and early June 2023, while he was being held in Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 (SIZO-1) and later quarantined in the colony.

According to the independent media outlet Mediazona, the prosecution relied on hidden camera footage, capturing Voronin’s comments on the apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in the 1990s, Russia’s involvement in the war in Syria, and the invasion of Ukraine — including the phrase: “To stop the war, someone needs to shoot Putin.”

The article also cites testimony from fellow inmate Valery Frolov, who shared a quarantine cell with Voronin in IK-4:

“He didn’t hide his opinion about what’s happening in our country. When we talked about the ‘special military operation,’ he said Russia attacked the khokhols [a derogatory term for Ukrainians]. That made my skin crawl. He’s not pretending. He’s an enemy, a saboteur, a goddamn rail-layer! The country didn’t give him what he wanted. But he’s mentally sound. He’s an educated man, knows the Bible well. Not an idiot.”

Voronin’s defense argued that his statements lacked public intent and that much of the recording was a result of provocation by prison officials.

On 17 July 2025, the First Western District Military Court in St. Petersburg, presided over by Judge Yuri Kozlov, sentenced Voronin to 6 years in a high-security penal colony and a fine. Taking into account his previous sentence, he is expected to serve another 10 years in total, the first three of which will be in prison.

Mailing address for letters:

(please confirm current format with Russian prison regulations before sending):

Voronin Andrey Olegovich (Воронин Андрей Олегович), Born: 1990

180000, Псков, улица Некрасова, дом 39, ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Псковской области

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Archpriest Vladimir Kuzmitsky is the former rector of the “Pantanassa” Church in Srednyaya Akhtuba, Volgograd Oblast.

He recorded an anti-war statement in which he anathematized all those who started the war. This led to threats of criminal prosecution and suspension from ministry, forcing him to emigrate to Georgia. There, he began working with the anti-war project Peace to All, using its platforms to speak out against the war.

On 11 July 2025, Kuzmitsky received a letter from the Kalach Diocese of the Volgograd Metropolis stating that the ruling bishop, Bishop Ioann (Kovalenko) of Kalach and Pallasovka, had approved a decision to depose him from the priesthood for “leaving the diocese” and “ceasing communication with the ruling hierarch.”

Ksenia Luchenko – a well-known Orthodox journalist, author of the Telegram channel “Orthodoxy and Zombies” and the book “With Good Intentions: The Russian Church and Power from Gorbachev to Putin.” She has consistently spoken out against the war in the media and on her social media platforms. She has written extensively about clergy in the Russian Orthodox Church who are persecuted for their anti-war stance, as well as about the Church leadership’s support for the war. Due to the risk of persecution, she was forced to leave Russia.

She has been regularly subjected to harassment and threats by pro-war Orthodox figures.

On May 16, 2025, she was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice.

Aleksandr Khmelev is a former cleric of the True Orthodox Church and, since 2015, a priest of the Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities in St. Petersburg. He has repeatedly spoken out against Russian aggression.

On 9 June 2025, the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg received an administrative offense protocol under Article 20.3.3, Part 1 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses (discrediting the armed forces). This is indicated by the case card published on the court’s website. Under this article, Khmelev faces a fine ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles.

On 20 June 2025, the case materials were submitted to the court’s records department.

Aliaksandr Khikhel is a singer-songwriter known for his music on social and political themes, particularly his Christian and anti-war lyrics. In his songs—often performed against a backdrop of icons and crosses—he criticized war and state violence from a Christian perspective. His YouTube channel had 49,000 subscribers.

On 4 June 2025, he was detained following a denunciation by a pro-Russian activist who had been accusing him of “supporting a coup” since 2020 and of making anti-war statements. His YouTube channel was deleted, and on 6 June 2025, it was officially declared “extremist material” by the court of the Maladziečna District in the Minsk Region.

Dzmitry Karneyenka – an Orthodox Christian, activist and scholar, a founding member of the Christian Vision group, administers the Christians Against War Telegram channel. In 2021, he was forced to leave Belarus due to the threat of persecution that began back in 2020 for participating in peaceful protests. Between 2020 and 2021, he was subjected to multiple arrests and fines — receiving no fewer than 10 administrative charges. Altogether, he spent 40 days in detention.

In September 2021, officers from GUBOPiK (the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption) raided Karneyenka’s registered apartment in Viciebsk and conducted a search. This was linked to a criminal case opened against a group of Vitebsk-based activists. At the time, Dzmitry was no longer living at that address — within a few days, he managed to leave Belarus.

On 3  July 2024, it became known that a criminal case had been opened against him under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code (Assisting extremist activity), the reason for which was his interview with the Belsat TV channel, which the Belarusian authorities consider an ‘extremist formation’. Karneyenka gave the interview in the first month of the beginning of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine in the capacity of the Christian Vision group member. At that time, he lived in Odesa; in the interview, he spoke about how Odesans coped with the war.

On 1 April 2025, the KGB added “Christian Vision” to the List of organisations, formations, individual entrepreneurs, involved in extremist activity as an “extremist formation” (KGB Decision of 01.04.2025 No. 4/41-26 “On declaring a group of citizens an extremist formation and prohibiting its activities”), and indicated Dzmitry Karniayenka as its participant. On 25 April 2025, new initiatives were added to the official list of “extremist formations” — among them, the initiative “Narodny Deputat”, which focuses on analyzing the effectiveness of regional authorities. Dzmitry Karneyenka was listed as a participant in this initiative.

On 10 April 2025, shortly after the appearance of “Christian Vision” — along with the names of three of its members, including Dzmitry Karneyenka — in the updated list of organizations and individuals “involved in extremist activity” published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police visited Karneyenka’s father in Vorša. They took a DNA sample from him and questioned him about his son. The following day, security forces visited Dzmitry’s mother-in-law in Viciebsk. He shared details of these visits on his Facebook page.