Vasily Vakhnin

Priest Vasily Petrovich Vakhnin (1873-1937) was the parish priest of the village of Pushkarivka in the Yekaterinoslav region and was shot in 1937 together with the priests Feodor Romanovsky and Iosif Chekhranov. He was glorified locally as a hieromartyr in the Kamianske diocese (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) by decision of the Synod of 18 March 2020.

He was born on 3 March 1873 in the village of Maximilianovka, Mariupol district, Yekaterinoslav province, in a priest's family. In 1897 he graduated from the Yekaterinoslav seminary in the first category, on 27 June 1897 was appointed psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Spirit in his native village, on 18 January 1898 was ordained deacon by Bishop Simeon Pokrovsky and served at the Annunciation church in Yekaterinoslav. On 6 August 1899 the bishop ordained him priest and appointed him rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in Pushkarivka, and from 27 November 1900 he was also teacher of religion at the village public school.

He was loved by his parishioners for his simplicity and mercy, kept the order of the Church without departure, and helped the poor. He had a large library of spiritual books, which he lent to anyone who wished to read. In 1930 he was first called to account for "destructive activity in the collective farm," and in the early 1930s the church of Saint Nicholas was closed. In 1936 a case was opened because he gave certificates of the birth years of parishioners, copied from his own notes in the parish register, at a time when the registers had been taken by the civil registry offices; he was fined 100 rubles. In the NKVD inquiry he explained that he had not thought this a crime, but a priest's duty.

On 27 September 1937 he was arrested on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet propaganda. The file said that for five years he had worked nowhere, that "under the cover of religion" he carried out propaganda, that he drew school-⁠age children to himself, that he advised parents not to let their children wear pioneer neckerchiefs, and that he urged collective farmers to renounce the communists. On 16 November 1937 the NKVD troika of the Dnepropetrovsk region sentenced him to death, and on 19 November he was shot near Dnepropetrovsk, together with the priests Feodor Romanovsky and Iosif Chekhranov, and buried in an unknown common grave. He was rehabilitated on 13 May 1989.

The canonization commission of the Synod examined the cases of the three priests on 27 February 2018. The Synod numbered them among the locally venerated saints of the Kamianske diocese on 18 March 2020, approving the troparion, kontakion, prayer and icon.