Father Andrey Tkachov. Photo: press

A Moscow man has been taken into police custody after his priest allegedly informed the Russian authorities of his anti-war views, Russian human rights group OVD-Info reported on Sunday.

Alexey Sebastyanenko told OVD-Info that his priest at the Church of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity in Moscow, had informed on him for expressing anti-war views in a private conversation, although he said he had merely quoted two of the 10 Commandments to Father Andrey Tkachov: “Thou shalt not kill, nor covet thy neighbour’s house.”

Tkachov was appointed to his role at the church in January, replacing Father Alexey Uminsky, who was removed from his post with the consent of Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), for his openly anti-war stance.

Tkachov, who is originally from Ukraine but has lived in Russia since 2014, is a supporter of the invasion of Ukraine, and was sanctioned by Ukraine in 2022. An extreme conservative, Tkachov has previously said that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” and that any woman seeking political office was suffering from “a disease, some kind of infection”. He also asked why a woman needed breasts at all if she had not breastfed.

In July, the ROC approved a statement describing Russia’s “special military operation” as a holy war, arguing that all of Ukraine should be in Russia’s exclusive zone of influence.