Platon Udovenko

Vladimir Petrovich Udovenko was born on 17 November 1940 in Uspenka, Lutuhyne District, Luhansk region, then Voroshilovgrad Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. He was the fourth child in a family that lost its father early. After finishing school in 1957 he became a novice at the Odessa Dormition Monastery, working in the candle workshop. From 1958 he studied at the Kiev Theological Seminary; after that school closed in 1960 he continued at Odessa Theological Seminary. He served in the Soviet Army from 1961 to 1964, completed seminary in 1965, and entered the Leningrad Theological Academy, graduating in 1969 as a candidate of theology with a dissertation on historical relations between the Russian and Roman Catholic Churches. He then worked as a referent in the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate while studying in the postgraduate programme of the Moscow Theological Academy.

Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) tonsured him a monk on 14 April 1971 with the name Platon, ordained him hierodeacon on 17 April and hieromonk on 12 September, and in 1972 elevated him to archimandrite for service in Argentina. On 16 December 1973 he was consecrated Bishop of Argentina and South America in Moscow's Epiphany Cathedral, with Patriarch Pimen presiding. In 1977 he became archbishop and patriarchal exarch for Central and South America.

From 1980 he was Archbishop of Sverdlovsk and Kurgan, also administering the Chelyabinsk diocese, and from 1981 to 1986 deputy chairman of the Department for External Church Relations. In December 1984 he took the Yaroslavl and Rostov see. Under his leadership the diocese regained churches in the city and more than fifty in the region, began restoring Tolga and Spaso-Yakovlevsky monasteries, and received several recovered relics. On 18 March 1990 he was elected a people's deputy of the RSFSR from a Yaroslavl constituency and served on the Supreme Soviet, working on the freedom of conscience committee and the law On Freedom of Conscience.

From 1 November 1993 he again led the Argentine and South American diocese. Patriarch Alexy II elevated him to metropolitan on 29 February 2004. The Holy Synod released him from that see on 26 July 2012 for service within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which on 20 December 2012 appointed him to the new Feodosia and Kerch diocese. On 7 June 2022 the Moscow Synod took the Crimean dioceses into the Patriarchate's direct jurisdiction. On 25 July 2024 he was released from Feodosia with gratitude and retired to Crimea. On 23 July 2026 he received the great schema in Moscow, retaining the name Platon for the martyr Platon of Ancyra.

As a monastic bishop Platon had no wife or children. His public life was defined by diocesan leadership, external church relations work and a brief spell in Russian legislative politics during the early 1990s. Secular honours included the Russian Order of Friendship (2000) for strengthening spiritual and cultural ties abroad and honorary citizenship of Kerch (2021). He also received numerous church awards from the Russian, Jerusalem and Polish Orthodox Churches. In January 2023 Ukraine placed him on a sanctions list amid the wider conflict.

Schemametropolitan Platon died on 6 November 2026 at the N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute for Emergency Medicine in Moscow after a prolonged illness. He was 85, in his eighty sixth year. The Moscow Patriarchate published the notice the same day and said the date, time and place of the funeral service and burial would be announced separately. Russian and church media, including Pravoslavie.ru and regional outlets covering the former Feodosia diocese, reported the death promptly.

Platon's legacy spans the late Soviet and post Soviet church: missionary and diaspora work in South America, parish restoration in the Urals and Yaroslavl, a role in early Russian religious liberty legislation, and the organisation of the Feodosia and Kerch diocese in Crimea. Admirers remember a long serving archpastor; critics note his alignment with Moscow's jurisdictional claims in Crimea and the Ukrainian sanctions that followed. Both strands belong to the public record of a bishop whose career tracked the church's late twentieth century geopolitics.