The 2nd Western District Military Court has appointed five years in a penal colony to hermit monk Hilarion (Nikolai Shatkovsky) from the village of Khokhlovo, Belgorod Region. He was also banned from maintaining pages on the Internet for four years after his release. This was reported to RIA Novosti and GTRK Belgorod in the regional department of the FSB.
The 59-year-old monk in his tiktok with more than 11 thousand subscribers spoke out against the war in Ukraine. Videos on the channel were released until March 2022, until TikTok limited work in Russia.
In October 2022, the monk was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center on two episodes of incitement to terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). The FSB reported on the criminal case only four months later, in February 2023. According to the intelligence service, Hilarion in his telegram channel called for violence against police officers and officials. The FSB press release says that he called for «the assassination of the highest officials of our state.»
According to the materials of the case, which Kommersant got acquainted with, a month before the arrest, on September 22, the monk published a video on Telegram, in which he says that “the Lord will bless” those who will overcome the “demonic power of the Rashists” , and also calls to take to the streets «with sharpeners» and kill law enforcement officers.
The verdict to Hilarion was passed on July 12, and it has already entered into force. In the footage from the announcement in court, the monk was standing with his head shaved and without a beard.
In the description of his Tiktok account, Hilarion wrote that he belongs to a part of the emigrant Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), which did not recognize joining the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007 and separated. Representatives of the breakaway church said that Shatkovsky had nothing to do with it. The FSB claimed that before the arrest, Hilarion was deprived of the monastic rank of the ROCOR.
According to Kommersant, Hilarion strongly opposed the war in Ukraine. “I am an Orthodox monk, half Ukrainian by nationality, half Pole. I don’t care about your attitude towards me,” he addressed subscribers at the end of February 2022. “The attitude of God towards me is important to me, I say what I think is necessary, and what, as I understand it, corresponds to the teachings of the church.”
In the last available Tiktok video, the monk discussed who was responsible for the invasion of Ukraine: “Why can't you criticize the country, even if it does demonic deeds? But it is not Russia that does this, not the Russians. This is done by one demon with a team of his zhidobes who are around him, and the oligarchs who enslaved the security forces with money — they serve them like dogs and muzzle Russia <…> Not only can this demon be criticized, it must be killed.” It was not possible to find his channel in Telegram.
Updated at 22:32. Added information about the materials of the case, which Kommersant has read.