The former schema-abbot Sergius (Nikolai Romanov), who was convicted in the case of extremism and the seizure of the monastery, asked Vladimir Putin to pardon him and send him to war in Ukraine. The text of the petition was obtained by URA.ru; this information was also confirmed to Kommersant by the cleric’s lawyer, Pavel Babikov.
In an address to Putin, the former schema-abbot writes that he helped build 20 churches and five monasteries in the Sverdlovsk region. In addition, according to Sergiy, since 2014 he has brought families with children from Donetsk and “provided them with everything they needed.”
The cleric noted that he asked to be sent to the war in Ukraine “as a nurse or a builder,” but he was refused due to his advanced age. At the same time, he intends to continue to strive to be sent to SVO.
“I apologize to you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and to everyone whom I upset with my words. I didn't have any malicious intent. I did not pursue the goal of causing schism or confusion, as evidenced by my path during the period of serving God and my subsequent behavior in captivity. My way of life is along the path of repentance to humility through self-reproach,” Sergius writes in his address.
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The schema-abbot gained fame for his video messages recorded in 2020. In them, he criticized quarantine restrictions and accused Putin of creating a «fascist concentration camp of Satan.» In June 2020, Sergius seized the Sredneuralsk women's monastery and sent Cossacks to guard it. In response, the cleric was defrocked and excommunicated. In December 2020, the monastery was surrounded by security forces, who stormed it and took the schema-abbot to Moscow.
In 2021, Sergius was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in the case of suicidal tendencies, arbitrarinessand obstruction of worship. In January 2023, he was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison under accusation of inciting religious hatred against Jews, Catholics and Muslims in six recordings of his sermons on the Internet.
Taking into account the addition of terms, the former schema-abbot was supposed to spend seven years in prison, but in September 2023 the court reduced his term of imprisonment in the colony by a month — to six years and 11 months.