In this photo, you see two UOC priests: on the right of Pavel Povalyaev – Fr. Oleksiy Zoshchuk (one of the heads of the SPZh outlet), and on the left – Fr. Taras Piddubny (husband of SPZh director Anna Piddubna). The last priest in this photo is Fr. Viktor Ostankov, a Russian national from Stavropol, of whom we will talk later.
The Russian parish in Cyprus became a refuge for the UOC (MP) priests who fled Ukraine, including the actual leadership of the SPZh (Union of Orthodox Journalists) media corporation operating in the interests of the UOC. At the same time, they continue to glorify Russia and the invaders.
This is stated in the new OSINT investigation by Monolog Zdes Telegram channel.
The Russian Orthodox Church operates in Cyprus the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, located in the city of Limassol.
Since September 2018, the former deacon of the Pechersk deaconry in Kyiv, archpriest Pavlo Povalyaev, who fled from Ukraine to Russia in 2014, became the abbot of this epicenter of Russian religious influence in Cyprus.
He likely fled Ukraine due to his connections with MP Oksana Kaletnyk (Communist Party), who was the only Ukrainian delegate to vote against the condemnation of the Russian occupation of Ukraine at the 23rd OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on July 1, 2014. First, Povalyaev moved to Russia, where he received Russian citizenship by personal decree of dictator Vladimir Putin, before ending up in Cyprus.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Fr. Maksym Stepaniuk become the first priest from Kyiv who left his parish behind to move to Povalyaev’s one. He had a Russian passport as he had served there for a few years. And already in April 2022, he ended up at the ROC parish in Limassol as the second priest.
Another fugitive was father Oleksiy Zoshchuk, the son of Peter Zoshchuk, a priest from Nova Ushytsia, Khmelnytskyi region, who studied at the Russian seminary in Dzerzhinsk, and then at the Kyiv Theological Academy. He largely went public ater the radicals from the C14 organization broke into SPZh’s Kyiv office in early 2018. Then he managed to escape from the mob through the back door.
It is noteworthy that his father, Fr. Petro Zoshchuk, is a great patriot of Ukraine, who is currently consecrating SUVs donated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine by volunteers, as reported by SPZh, controlled by his son.
Tarasii Piddubny was also among the fugitives. After the Russian invasion, in the summer of 2022, both the priest himself and his family were still in Kyiv. Then he consecrated crosses at his church, which he had erected in Kriukivshchyna. And already in April 2023, he and his family ended up in Cyprus, where he immediately appeared in the photoshoots from the ROC parish in Limassol.
“In our opinion, the escape of Piddubny and Zoshchuk had been well-planned and organized in advance. They knew where they would run and were preparing to flee,” the investigators said.
In addition, the Kyiv fugitive Archimandrite Alipius (Svetlichnyi) and the infamous Russian Orthodox propagandist Alexander Boryslavsky (aka Alexander Vaznesensky, Capybara, etc.) also live in Limassol.
Another Kyiv priest from the UOC (MP), who regularly co-serves with Povalyaev and other such priests from Ukraine at the ROC parish in Limassol, is Fr. Pimien Kurishko, a priest from St. George’s Church in Kyiv. Kurishko manages to serve both in Kyiv and at the Russian Orthodox Church in Cyprus.
