Cyprian Yankovsky

Saint Cyprian (Lev Nikolaevich Yankovsky), venerable martyr, was an archimandrite of the Kharkiv diocese who was shot in 1938 during the Soviet persecution. He is venerated as a local saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and commemorated on 19 May.

He was born on 31 October 1897 in Kharkiv. He is known to have received a higher spiritual education, graduating from one of the theological academies, though the sources do not say which. He took the monastic name Cyprian later, and alongside it the form Slobodsky is also found, after Sloboda, the old name of the Kharkiv region.

When he was arrested in March 1938 he was an archimandrite and served at the church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God on the Lysa Hora hill in Kharkiv. He was accused of activity against the Soviet state and on 15 April 1938 was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on 26 May 1938, again in Kharkiv.

On 22 June 1993 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on his local canonization in the Kharkiv diocese, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Sloboda land. The service of glorification took place on 3 and 4 July 1993 in the Annunciation cathedral of Kharkiv, during the visit of the Primate of the Church, Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and all Ukraine.

His canonization is therefore local and not that of the whole Orthodox Church. His memory is kept on 19 May.