Very Rev. Konstiantin Maksymov (b. 1983) was a priest in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church of the Berdiansk eparchy of the UOC in Tokmak, Zaporizhzzhia.
Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he found himself in the occupied territories. He objected to the annexation of the Berdiansk eparchy by the Russian Orthodox Church. He was involved in volunteer work.
On the morning of 10 May 2023, he left occupied Tokmak on a volunteer humanitarian mission through Crimea. At 10:27, he told his friends on the phone that he had arrived at a checkpoint, presumably in Chongar. Since then, there has been no contact with Very Rev. Maksymov. The priest was likely to have been detained by the Russian military and ended up in a filtration camp in Dzhankoy.
In February 2024, Maksymov was transferred to a pretrial detention center in Simferopol. At the same time, a criminal case was opened against him under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Espionage”) for the fact that the priest allegedly “using an Internet messenger transmitted information to an employee of the Security Service of Ukraine with the coordinates of the location of technical means of Russian air defense located in the city and region.”
The criminal trial began on 6 June 2024, in Melitopol, then it was postponed until 31 July. On 2 August 2024, the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Regional Court – at a trial held at the Russian-controlled Crimean Supreme Court in Simferopol – found 41-year-old Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) priest Fr Kostiantyn Maksimov guilty on charges of «espionage». The Judge sentenced him to 14 years’ imprisonment in a strict regime labour camp.
