14:54, 20 September
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has suspected Dmitry Petrovsky, an employee of the Department for External Church Relations ( DECR ) of the Moscow Patriarchate, of working for Russian intelligence. This was reported by sources of intelligence services researchers, authors of the website “Agentura.ru” Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.
Suspicion against Petrovsky became known in the spring of 2023, when parishes of several Orthodox churches in the United States received a warning from the FBI that Russian intelligence services were conducting undercover work among priests and parishioners. A copy of the warning was provided to journalists by sources in the US Orthodox community.
The FBI believes that Petrovsky, under the cover of the Russian Orthodox Church, was recruiting agents for Russian intelligence services among priests and parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox churches in the United States, write Soldatov and Borogan.
According to the biography on the website of the Patriarchal Commission for Sports, Petrovsky graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), began his career in the DECR in 2001, and in 2018 became the secretary of the commission. According to Agentura.ru sources, Petrovsky has been well known in Orthodox circles in the United States since the 1990s. Since then, he has traveled around the world on assignment, including accompanying the Russian team at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and 2022.
Soldatov and Borogan note the unusual hobby of an employee of the Russian Orthodox Church – martial arts. His biography notes that he was one of the organizers of the round table “Orthodox consciousness and martial arts” at the Moscow Theological Academy in 2002.
“This is not the only unusual feature in Petrovsky’s behavior: his WhatsApp avatar looks, to put it mildly, atypical for an employee of the patriarch’s diplomatic service – it is a cat in a bandana and with a bat and the inscription “military intelligence” on the collar,” the article says “ Agentury.ru”.
In May 2021, Petrovsky was searched upon entering the United States. Files related to Russian intelligence were found on his computer, write Soldatov and Borogan. Among the documents found were files on famous Orthodox priests in the United States with details of the biographies of their family members. The FBI believed that Petrovsky needed such information to blackmail these people during the recruitment process.
One of the files found was marked “confidential.” The FBI quoted him in full in their warning. Thus, according to the department, this document contained a description of the areas of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian intelligence services – the SVR, the GRU and the FSB.
(C)MEDUZA 2023