MOSCOW, February 4 – RIA Novosti. Ukrainian special services included in the sanction lists of long-dead bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), said Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk (Sevryuk), Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.

According to information on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich), who died in 1961, headed the DECR from 1946 to 1960. He was also a member of the Extraordinary State Commission since 1942 to detect and investigate the persecution of the Nazi occupiers and their accomplices.

Metropolitan Anthony claimed that the people who compiled the list copied the names and surnames of all the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church from the official website or from the church calendar in which such lists were published.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) on personal sanctions against 10 representatives of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Previously, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine also sanctioned 22 Russian religious figures. These include the head of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk (Sevryuk), Patriarch Exarch of Africa, Metropolitan Leonid of Klin (Gorbachev), Patriarch Exarch of Southeast Asia, Metropolitan Singapore and Sergius of Southeast Asia (Chashin), Moscow and Archbishop Nikolai Balashov, advisor to the All-Russian Patriarch Kirill, representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the World Council of Churches and other international organizations in Geneva, nephew of Patriarch Kirill, Archbishop Mikhail Gundyaev, and a number of other clergy, including metropolitan cities. Also on the list are Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for Community and Media and Church Relations, and other secular Orthodox figures.