Apti Alaudinov personally apologizes to Schema-Abbot Gavriil

Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the “Akhmat” special forces, personally apologized to Schema-Abbot Gavriil for his words about the priest’s mental abilities. Schema-Abbot Gavriil has stated that he had “no disagreements” with Apti Alaudinov after their personal meeting. The priests has also noted that his statement about Muslims was “misunderstood.”

On the evening of June 19, Apti Alaudinov posted in his Telegram channel a video recording of his meeting with Schema-Abbot Gavriil, the former head of the Sochi metochion in the Valaam Monastery. The meeting took place at the church in the village of Rakitnoye in the Belgorod Region with the participation of Andrei Kormukhin, the leader of the “Sorok Sorokov” (Forty Forties) Orthodox movement.

Apti Alaudinov has emphasized that during the meeting, he personally apologized to the priest. “So that everyone can hear: I sincerely apologized to Father Gavriil. I really apologized for expressing myself in a way that was not appropriate for me as a Caucasian, a Muslim,” Apti Alaudinov stated on video.

Schema-Abbot Gavriil himself has claimed that his statement about Muslims was “misunderstood.” “They threw in the information by cutting 40 seconds out of my sermon and presented it that way,” Schema-Abbot Gavriil claims. The priest has assured the public that there were Muslims in his own family and that the part of the sermon that provoked the scandal described “Wahhabis.”

Apti Alaudinov has emphasized that the conflict arose because of a fragment of the Father Gavriil’s speech “taken out of context,” in which he found a like-minded person during the personal meeting. All three participants in the conversation have reduced their arguments to the fact that certain enemies of Russia are trying to incite interfaith strife in the country.

“We understand the situation in exactly the same way. Those people want to set Orthodox and traditional Muslims at odds in order to create chaos and confusion, maybe even bloodshed, in the rear of the homeland, which is waging a difficult war. This, of course, is beneficial to our enemies,” Schema-Abbot Gavriil believes.

This was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on June 20, 2025 at 04:33 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.