During the debate in the Kalininsky District Court of St. Petersburg, the prosecutor asked the ex-priest Ioann Kurmoyarov to be sentenced to seven years in a penal colony in the case of military fakes. This is reported by «Paper» with reference to a correspondent in the courtroom.
Kurmoyarov is accused of disseminating false information about the Russian army motivated by political hatred (clause «e» of part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). In addition to the real term, the prosecutor asked to ban the defendant from administering websites for two years.
The criminal case against the former priest became known in June 2022. Then Kurmoyarov was placed in a pre-trial detention center — later he was registered in the detention center as «prone to extremism and terrorism.» He also complained that the prison staff ignored his requests for help due to poor health.
Several anti-war videos, including the video “Who will be in hell and who in heaven ? In it, Kurmoyarov criticized the invasion of Ukraine from the point of view of Christian doctrine — in particular, he said that the dead Russian soldiers would go to hell, not heaven, since they were not peacekeepers.
August 10, 2022 to the priest filed a final charge in the case, on August 29 it became known that he pleaded guilty. On April 25, 2023, information appeared that the judge had changed in the case, and therefore the materials will be considered again.
The former priest has repeatedly spoken out against the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2020, he was suspended from ministry for two months and fired from the Novosibirsk Theological Seminary without explanation. He himself associated this with criticism of the main temple of the Ministry of Defense.
In 2022, Kurmoyarov joined the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (RTsPZ) — later the Russian Orthodox Church deprived him of the priesthood due to «active media activity in support of the nationalist regime of Ukraine», the spread of «fakes» about the armed forces, as well as for participation in the «schismatic organization» of ROCOR.