The Zyuzinsky District Court of Moscow sentenced the rector of the Church of the Archangel Michael in Letov, Dmitry Kuvirtalov, to three years in a general regime colony, accused of exchanging pornographic images in correspondence with a minor whom he paid for the pictures. TASS reports this with reference to his lawyer Denis Baluev.
The prosecutor's office requested eight years for the archpriest. Kuvyrtalov was taken into custody in the courtroom.
In March 2023, the priest was sent to the front to be the confessor of the military. There, the guard saw the gadgets left behind by Kuvirtalov and found correspondence with pornographic images in them. The archpriest was detained and placed in the commandant's office of the self-proclaimed LPR, where he remained for two weeks.
The priest was released from the commandant's office when his sons and a lawyer came to see him. At the same time, the materials of Kuvyrtalov’s case were transferred to the Moscow department of the Investigative Committee, Baluev said.
As a result, security forces found three WhatsApp correspondence on the archpriest’s phone with people with whom he exchanged pornographic images. Among them was a 15-year-old girl who sent photographs of herself to the priest for money. A criminal case was opened against Kuvirtalov for distributing pornography among minors (clause “b” of Part 3 of Article 242 of the Criminal Code).
The priest's lawyer claims that all correspondence was conducted “by mutual consent.”
Kuvyrtalov publicly supports Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, he said that “only a proactive step allowed us to enter enemy territory and overcome the space that should have become insurmountable for us.” The priest called military casualties among people “inevitable.”