The punishment was triggered by a repost the priest made on his channel on November 5, 2022. That is the exact date ZakS cited in its report on the case, and it formed the basis of the protocol. The text concerned a podcast from a foreign media outlet, and the repost included a link to the podcast itself. ZakS did not name the media outlet. According to RBC and SOVA, it was Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses deals with participation in the activities of a foreign or international organization deemed undesirable in Russia. The penalty is an administrative fine, not criminal prosecution. In this case, the court imposed 5,000 rubles, which is among the sanctions applied to individuals in such cases.
Date of the Ruling and the Protocol
The offense protocol was drawn up in June. According to ZakS, the court ruling was issued on September 22. SOVA, citing the case card, gives September 21, 2026. The one-day discrepancy does not change the substance of the ruling, but it matters to those tracking the chronology of such cases. Both outlets agree on the main point: the fine was imposed on Archbishop Grigory Mikhonov-Vaytenko, and the basis was specifically the repost.
The court's press service explained the logic of the ruling in the same way as in cases involving other outlets. In its wording, disseminating material from a foreign media outlet via repost means that the foreign agent “participated in the activities of this organization.” In other words, the repost itself—not authorship of the text or organizing one's own project—became the subject of administrative assessment. This approach allows the article to be applied to ordinary actions on social media, including sharing others' publications.
ZakS links the circumstances of the case to a broader picture in St. Petersburg. The outlet placed the archbishop's story in the same roundup as the detention in Vyborg of the head of the local Mormon community. According to ZakS, he is charged under a criminal article on participation in an extremist organization. The charge has not yet been confirmed by a verdict, so this is the outlet's version, not an established fact.
What Next
The two cases that ZakS grouped in one roundup fall under different articles and different levels of liability. The administrative case over the repost was heard at the magistrate level, with a fixed fine, whereas the Vyborg case, as ZakS reported, involves criminal charges. Together they show that laws on undesirable and extremist structures are applied to religious figures in both formats: through fines for online actions and through criminal cases for membership or leadership.
Archbishop Grigory Mikhonov-Vaytenko remains in a situation where the ruling has already been issued. As of publication, he had not commented publicly on the case. Reports from ZakS, RBC, and SOVA contain no information about an appeal of the fine. So far, one thing is known: the ruling on the five thousand rubles has entered into force with a date that sources give differently, and it is tied to a repost of a 2022 publication.
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