Two priests held over plot to assassinate Putin’s personal Bishop in monastery bomb attack

TWO priests have been held on suspicion of plotting the assassination of Vladimir Putin’s personal confessor.

The pair were said to have been recruited by Ukraine to kill Bishop Tikhon Shev­kunov, 66, the Metropolitan of Crimea, in a bomb attack on a Moscow monastery.

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But Orthodox priests Denis Popovich, 27, and Nikita Ivankovich, 28, were nabbed by Putin’s FSB ­security service.

They appeared to confess in an FSB video, in which Popovich said: “The task was to find an ally and liquidate Metropolitan Tikhon by means of explosives.”

 They now face terrorism charges which could lead to life in jail.

Pro-war Tikhon, the senior Russian Orthodox church figure in occupied Crimea, has likened Putin to Russian emperor Peter the Great.

His secretary Popovich, a Ukrainian citizen, allegedly gained illegal access to his Telegram account, monitored his correspondence and received information about his trips.

In the FSB video, he said he was recruited by Ukraine’s GUR security service, who threatened to kill his relatives.

He and Russian Ivankovich were said to have hatched a plot to blow up the Metropolitan’s quarters at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow.

 They had collected explosives and Ukrainian passports from a stash in a forest and were planning to flee Russia after the attack, it was claimed.

But Popovich was arrested on his way to the monastery in January.

Ivankovich said on the video he was recruited by GUR in mid-2024.

He added: “My task was the physical destruction of the Metropolitan of Crimea through the detonation of an improvised explosive device.”

Both men were accused of sending money to Ukraine’s forces since 2022.