Employees of the territorial recruitment center (TCK, an analogue of the military enlistment office) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) abducted two monks of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Izyum in the Kharkiv region. This is reported by TASS with reference to the Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ).
According to the UOJ, they broke into the monastery of the UOC in honor of the Peschanskaya Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then took Archimandrite Leonty and Hieromonk Arseny with them. The clergy were taken to the military enlistment office, where they are under lock and key.
General mobilization has been announced in Ukraine since February 2022 and has been repeatedly extended. In Ukraine, clergy are not exempt from general mobilization if they are subject to it by age and health status. However, at the end of 2024, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers allowed the booking of priests of "critically important religious organizations," and in early June 2025, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience approved a list of more than 7,700 such organizations. Local media immediately noticed that, with a few exceptions, there are no communities and parishes of the canonical UOC, but communities of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and even religious organizations with dubious reputations are widely represented. As explained in the civil service, the decision to include religious organizations in the list of critically important was made on the basis of "special criteria."