A court in Moscow has sentenced in absentia journalist Kseniia Luchenko, author of the Telegram channel “Pravoslavie i zombi,” to eight years in a penal colony. The reason was a post about a missile strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv in July 2024.
This was reported by Radio Svoboda.

At the time, the journalist wrote that while “the Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity” is being celebrated in Orthodox Russia, bombs are falling on Ukrainian children.

“The Russian Orthodox state celebrated the ‘Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity’ by striking a children’s hospital in Kyiv with a missile bomb. And in Russia, a ‘Parade of Families’ is taking place. They serve a festive liturgy, then proceed in this parade, an ersatz religious procession, they sing troparia, then they hand out some medals to large families, and at the same time bombs are falling on Ukrainian children. These are the ‘values of Holy Rus,’” the post says.

Experts engaged by the investigation concluded that in the message the actions of the Russian army are “characterized as violent, associated with loss of life, including minors, as well as with the destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

In the autumn of 2025, Luchenko was placed on a wanted list in Russia, added to the register of “terrorists and extremists,” and arrested in absentia. The journalist currently lives abroad.

According to LF, in November 2025 Patriarch Kirill Gundiaev stated that military valor is “inseparable” from spiritual valor, and participation in war can be regarded as a form of Christian service.

Earlier, LF reported on how Russia used religion to prepare for the invasion of Ukraine.

As LF also reported, images of participants in the “special military operation,” that is, the invasion of Ukraine, appeared in one of the churches of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Earlier, we reported how the Russian Orthodox Church provides churches for training military youth clubs.