Russia claims to have foiled assassination of ‘Putin’s confessor’

Metropolitan Tikhon of Simferopol and Crimea has been repeatedly mentioned as a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

Russia’s security service reported that it intercepted a plan to assassinate a prominent Orthodox hierarch, believed to have close ties to Vladimir Putin.

The planned attack targeted the 66-year-old Metropolitan Tikhon of Simferopol and Crimea, widely known as “Putin’s confessor”.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) said last Friday it had arrested two men who allegedly planned the attack: Denis Popovich, a Ukrainian living in Russia and working as Tikhon’s assistant, and the cleric Nikita Ivankovich, who is a Russian citizen. They were held on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack and illegal trafficking of explosive devices.  

According to the FSB, the Ukrainian intelligence service (GUR) recruited the two men in mid-2024 via the Telegram messaging app and provided them with an explosive device intended for Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, where Metropolitan Tikhon was staying.

It claimed the two men had admitted to plotting against the metropolitan. The GUR, which in the past has taken responsibility for similar actions such as the assassination of a high-ranking Russian army general in December, has denied the FSB’s accusations.

Vladimir Legoida, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for Relations between the Church and Society and Mass Media, described the planned attack as terrorism, hoping that the issue would be discussed at the UN Security Council. He said the attack had been intended to “escalate the confrontation” and to “postpone peace talks.”

“Ukrainian secret services, along with a number of Western countries supporting them, deliberately targeted a hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, further demonstrating the terrorist nature of their activities,” Legoida claimed.  

Metropolitan Tikhon was appointed to the Crimean Metropolis in 2023. The position holds high political importance within the Russian Orthodox Church, given the illegal annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine by Moscow in 2014. He has been repeatedly mentioned as a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

Following the plot to assassinate Tikhon last week, the FSB reported that on Monday it foiled another terrorist attack by killing a Russian national who was supposedly planning assaults on the Moscow metro and Jewish places of worship.

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