Dear Brother Archons and Friends of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,

In this brief twenty-minute podcast, Sister Vassa Larin, an Orthodox nun, discusses the martyrdom of Alexei Navalny, the fearless Russian opposition leader who died in prison in February 2024 under circumstances widely believed to involve the Russian regime. Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow and his successor as the leader of the Russian opposition, received the Athenagoras Human Rights Award in 2024.

This podcast is now a year old, dating from less than two weeks after Alexei Navalny was killed. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend that you take twenty minutes to view it, or view it again if you have seen it before. This video is a powerful witness to the fact that Alexei Navalny richly deserves the status of martyr, and strongly refutes those who wish to demean him.

Sister Vassa’s moving words have now been rendered all the more powerful and compelling by the persecution that Sister Vassa, whose podcast has a global following, has suffered over the last few months. This daughter of a ROCOR priest, she has been defrocked by ROCOR hierarchs for daring to stand in support of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is worth recalling in this connection that when the Orthodox bishops who would ultimately form ROCOR were escaping from the brutality of Lenin and Stalin, they arrived in Constantinople as refugees and were given succor and legitimacy by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.