Member of the Synodal Liturgical Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church MP, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Professor protodeacon Vladimir Vasilik considers the arrested Fr. Sergiy (Romanov) an "American agent".
"The activity of Fr. Sergiy (Romanov) and other critics of the Moscow Patriarchate are funded by foreign special services," he said.
"On the eve of 2016, there was information that the CIA allocated about 70 million to work in Russia to split the Russian Orthodox Church," the protodeacon recalled. Where such information took place - the protodeacon did not say: obviously, he tried to hint at his access to the secrets of the Russian special services and, possibly, disclosed secret information in this way, Credo.press reports, calling such statements paranoid.
According to the professor-protodeacon, Fr. Sergiy "had significant financial support", "he was used without his knowledge".
Lawyers of the arrested Fr. Sergei (Romanov) believe that the charges against their client are "connected with the internal church conflict", which began with the fact that the Sredneuralsky convent, where Sergiy lived until recently, stopped "spending significant funds on the maintenance of the Diocese of Yekaterinburg." In particular, lawyer Pavel Babikov said that the monastery "annually gave more than 20 million rubles for the maintenance of the diocese," and a few years ago "gave the current Metropolitan Yevgeny (Kulberg) a Toyota Camry." Then they stopped transferring funds.
On December 29, 2020, law enforcement officers in a tight uniform detained Fr. Sergiy (Romanov) and searched the Sredneuralsky monastery.
Commissioner for Human Rights in the Sverdlovsk region Tatyana Merzlyakova condemned the security forces' actions during the assault on the Sredneuralsky monastery.
As Credo.press adds, during the Great Terror in the USSR in 1937-38, many new Russian martyrs were executed on paranoid charges of being "foreign agents". Recently, OGPU documents were published stating that the founder of the modern Moscow Patriarchate, Sergiy (Stragorodsky), was also being prepared to be declared a "Japanese spy".