​Ionafan, the Russian Metropolitan exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners

​Arrested in August 2023, the 75-year-old leader of the Tulčin eparchy is a symbolic figure of the religious face of the ongoing conflict. For him, Patriarch Kirill would directly intervene by involving the Vatican in the negotiations. Many Russian propagandists are now assuring that he will become the new head of the patriarchal Church in Ukraine, replacing the subdued Onufryj.

Kiev (AsiaNews) - A sensation has been caused in recent days by the exchange of Metropolitan Ionafan (Eletskikh) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Upz, who was in prison for supporting Moscow's war, with a group of Ukrainian prisoners returned by Moscow to Kiev, an operation symbolic of the ongoing conflict.

The clerical hierarch was considered one of the main 'traitors and Russian agents' in Ukraine, and his arrest was presented as a victory with the 'internal enemy', while on the Russian side it was a demonstration of the 'anti-religious persecution of the Nazi regime' in Kiev, and his release now points the way to victory.

Thus many Russian propagandists now ensure that Ionafan will become the new head of the patriarchal Church in Ukraine, replacing the subjugated Metropolitan Onufryj (Berezovsky).

For Moscow, the person of the freed Metropolitan represents the religious motivation of the entire conflict, the 'loyalty to canonical Orthodoxy' instead of the separatist and autocephalous Orthodoxy, and redeems all Orthodox priests and bishops in Ukraine who 'resist in the face of the evil one', as the Russian newspapers repeat. Ionafan is said to have actually renounced being included in the prisoner exchange group, but was freed by a direct intervention of Moscow Patriarch Kirill, supported by a similar request from Pope Francis to the Ukrainian authorities.

The Ukrainian version claims instead that the Metropolitan himself spontaneously asked to be exchanged, not confirming the great 'political influence' of Kirill with the support of the Vatican.

Some independent sources actually confirm that Pope Bergoglio would have mentioned Ionafan's name in the recent meeting he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj and his advisor Andrej Ermak, on the occasion of the Italian G7 in Borgo Egnazia.

There is no official confirmation of this, but one cannot rule out such mediation, which could only have taken place at the request of Patriarch Kirill, who would therefore have demonstrated an ability to effectively influence war-religious events.

The Metropolitan's lawyer recalls that Ionafan, who was arrested in August 2023 with a five-year sentence, had suffered a heart attack in prison last March, and the prolongation of his detention 'would have been a de facto death sentence'.

The charge against him concerned pro-Russian leaflets that were distributed from the Tulčin eparchy in the Vinnitsa region in central Ukraine, and his persistent preaching in support of the Upz Church's dependence on the Moscow Patriarchate.

Ionafan, 75, had led the eparchy since 2006, and is an outstanding personality within Ukrainian Orthodoxy. A composer of liturgical music, translator of liturgical and spiritual texts, he had entered the Leningrad seminary in 1970, at the height of the Soviet era, and became one of the leading experts in Orthodox chant, also coming into contact with avant-garde lay musicians.

He made his monastic profession before Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), the spiritual (and other) master of the current Patriarch Kirill, who later ordained him as a young bishop. In 1986 he was questioned by the KGB about the spread of Aleksandr Solženitsyn'sGulag Archipelago among the seminarians, and for this he was expelled from Leningrad.

He managed to resume his ministry in Kiev, even participating in the restitution of some areas of the Kiev Cave Lavra on the occasion of the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus' in 1988, becoming bishop the following year.

He has thus traversed all the passages of recent Russian and Ukrainian history and the religious revival of Orthodoxy, and one of the charges against him was the composition, still in 2015, of the Hymn of 'supplication for Russia', in which he prays 'Almighty and just God, guard Mother Russia, and unite us all in love for the native Fatherland! Be invincible always, Motherland, Holy Rus!" Now Ionafan is in Russia as a 'victorious martyr', ready to lead the faithful in the ultimate test of the holy war.