A priest and a nun serving in the Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were murdered on July 26 and 28, respectively.
Police are not investigating their killings in connection with each other.
A nun, whom the police would only identify as Alevtyna of the Holy Ascension Florovsky Nunnery, was found beaten and strangled to death in her apartment on the anniversary of when the medieval kingdom of Kyivan Rus was baptized in 988.
Two unidentified suspects shot Father Roman Nikolayev in the head while he was on his way home on July 26 in the northern district of Obolon.
Police are investigating both cases as pre-meditated murder.
“The investigation does not connect these (two) episodes,” said Iryna Levchenko, spokeswoman for the Kyiv department of the Interior Ministry Kyiv department, told the Kyiv Post.” They are in fact very different. Two separate investigation teams are working on them. But we are exploring different versions.”
Yevhen Samoylenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate told the Kyiv Post that the murders could hardly be connected on religious grounds. Both victims were dressed in civilian clothes and the neighbors of Nikolayev hadn’t even known that he was a priest.
“A day before her death, sister Alevtyna asked the reverend mother to let her go home to have a bath, because there was no hot water at the nunnery and she was preparing for an operation,” said Samoylenko.
Maria-Agafia, the mentor sister to Alevtyna, said that the 64-year-old was a nun for fifteen years, and she was suffering from cancer.
“We here don’t socialize too much. I know she (Alevtyna) was very sick, thin as a stick old lady, who was harmless,” Maria-Agafia said. “When the investigator showed me the pictures from the crime scene, I was frightened. Her killer was so cruel. He strangled and beat her. The burns from the cigarette stubs were all over her body. Her hands were tied,” she said.
According to Maria-Agafia, the main version of why somebody tortured and then killed Alevtyna was her apartment. The villains tried to force her to sign over documents.
“She willed her apartment to her nephew. But Alevtyna had many relatives. Maybe someone was very unsatisfied with her decision,” said Antonia Filkyna, Mother Superior of the nunnery.
The shot priest was found by his neighbor in the corridor of his house on Heroyiv Stalinhrada Street a few minutes after the shooting. Nikolayev survived but after two days in a coma he didn’t make it and passed away, according to local Segondnya newspaper.
Police have already made a sketch of the suspects wanted for his shooting, according to cripo.com.
Levchenko declined to provide more details referring to the secrecy of investigation.
She only said that “there is no information that anything was stolen from the victims.”
