At the beginning of 2014, there were over 2,000 religious organizations registered in Crimea, and 80 percent of the peninsula's residents identified themselves as believers. What would have happened if the leaders of religious communities had called on believers en masse not to recognize the occupying authorities? We can only guess. Instead, I propose to name the traitors in cassocks and turbans. 

Before the occupation, almost half of Crimeans belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (the UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Simferopol and Crimean (one of three and the largest on the peninsula) diocese was headed by Metropolitan Lazar. In secular life, he was Rostislav Shvets, a native of the Volyn region, who served in Crimea for twenty-two years of his then seventy-five. During the first two turbulent months of the annexation, Lazar did not utter a single word of condemnation against the occupiers. On April 16, 2014, he congratulated Gauleiter Aksyonov on his appointment and blessed him for his “good deeds.”

This step effectively legitimized the occupation in the eyes of parishioners and sent a signal to subordinates. The letters “UOC” quickly began to disappear from church signs, and the Crimean diocese began to operate as part of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, formally, the Simferopol, Dzhankoy, and Feodosia dioceses only came under the control of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church after the full-scale invasion in June 2022. Shortly thereafter, Lazar was sent into retirement, and his position was taken over by Tikhon (Georgy Shevkunov), known in the Russian media as “Putin's confessor.”

Only then was Lazar added to the Ukrainian sanctions lists, and the SBU initiated the suspension of his Ukrainian citizenship. 

But let's go back to 2014. The quiet loyalty, which Ukrainian priests wittily called “Lazar's silence,” looked decent compared to the antics of some other Crimean priests. Archimandrite Kallinik (Konstantin Chernyshov) called Ukraine “a country occupied by Nazis” at pro-Russian rallies and referred to himself as “the defender of Crimea from Ukrainian Nazism.” He turned his church into a weapons depot for the “self-defense of Crimea,” for which he received a medal from the occupiers, which he was very proud of.

However, all this did not prevent Kallinik from coming to Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region in 2019 so that Metropolitan Onufriy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate could conduct a service on the occasion of his appointment as Bishop of Bakhchisaray.

Sevastopol Archpriest Serhiy Khalyuta also sided with the enemy from the very beginning of the annexation, for which he was rewarded with the position of director of the Chersonesos Taurian Museum. He did not hold this position for long - scientists were outraged that they were being led by a person who had neither special education nor experience. 

However, Khalyuta was not upset by his dismissal and returned to his religious duties. During these services, the priest organizes a collection of signatures for a law allowing domestic violence, calls Russian soldiers “the embodiment of Christianity,” and even consecrates weapons of mass destruction, in particular S-400 missile systems. However, Ukraine has not yet imposed any sanctions or criminal cases against him. 

The secretary of the Crimean Metropolis, Alexander Yakushechkin, was one of the most active figures of the “Crimean Spring.” At rallies, he shouted about “returning home,” and in the church, he called on believers to first vote in a referendum for accession to Russia and then to participate in elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

Yakushechkin's loyalty to the occupiers has not affected his career in any way. Every year, he is awarded new orders and certificates, and it seems that this is done quite randomly. For example, in 2020, he received the medal “For Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” and a year later, the title of “Honored Worker of Education.” Nevertheless, Yakushechkin is not on the Ukrainian sanctions list.

In the spring of 2014, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea had to choose between the occupiers and the faithful. After all, the vast majority of the latter are Crimean Tatars who openly opposed the annexation. This did not stop Mufti Emirali Ablayev from betraying his people. Following the invaders, he obediently repeated slogans about “countering extremism” and “interfaith harmony.” The mufti lost the respect of the Crimeans, but retained his position.

He still holds it today - his complete indifference to the repression of his people in his homeland has made Ablayev a reliable ally of the Russians, while a Ukrainian court has sentenced the traitorous mufti to 12 years in prison in absentia.

Ablayev's deputy, Raim Gafarov, made a rapid career during the occupation — before that, he was a simple imam in Simferopol. In 2020, when believers demanded that the Muslim spiritual administration express its position on the mass arrests of Crimean Tatars, Gafarov did so. “If they are being imprisoned, then there must be a reason,” said the deputy mufti, advising Crimeans “not to play with fire.”

And in the spring of 2022, when the world was shocked by the crimes committed by Russians in Irpin and Bucha, Gafarov prayed for Putin and approved of the aggression at a congress of Crimean Tatars, which the occupiers had convened to simulate “support of the population for the SVO.” Then he delivered food and medicine to the occupiers in the Kherson region and boasted about it on propaganda TV channels. Ukrainian law enforcement officials informed him that he was suspected of aiding an aggressor state, and Gafarov faces the same 12 years behind bars.

Aider Ismailov is another deputy mufti who willingly cooperates with the invaders.

Ismailov personally thanked Putin for hospitals, schools, and kindergartens for Crimeans — all of which, according to him, did not exist on the peninsula under Ukrainian rule. Ismailov calls the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization, for membership in which the Russians are imprisoning hundreds of Crimeans for long terms, an “extremist sect controlled by the SBU.” He represents the muftiate and the Crimean Tatar community at numerous propaganda events in support of the war against Ukraine. However, Ukraine has not yet announced any suspicions or sanctions against Ismailov.