The Shevchenko District Court of Kyiv sentenced to seven years the military chaplain of the Right Sector (at the time of his arrest – the “priest” of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate) Vasily Kosyachenko in the case of an attack on journalists in 2016, Strana reports.
Kosyachenko was detained by Ukrainian law enforcement officers after, together with a group of radicals, he tried to kidnap several employees of Channel 17, while carrying out a pogrom of the channel’s office and theft of hardware equipment worth more than UAH 300,000.
The media also reported that the “hierarch” of the UOC-KP (now the OCU) Sergei Gorobtsov promised to fully support the detained “chaplain”.
Interestingly, a representative of the schismatic religious organization was tried at once under three articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, namely “Robbery”, “Illegal imprisonment” and “Obstruction of journalistic activities.”
On the second and third counts, the accused was acquitted.
“If Kosyachenko had not been caught driving a car in which he was trying to take out the stolen equipment, he would most likely have escaped responsibility altogether,” noted journalist Vladislav Bovtruk.
