"As growing numbers of members of the Eastern Catholic Churches fell under the rule of the House of Romanov as a result of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Great Northern War, and the Partitions of Poland, they experienced escalating persecution.

For example, on 11 July 1705, Tsar Peter I of Russia was so enraged to see icons of Greek Catholic martyr Josaphat Kuntsevych inside the Basilian monastery church in Polotsk, that the Tsar immediately desecrated the Eucharist and then personally murdered several priests who attempted to retrieve it.[5]" -Russian-Greek Catholic Church Wikipedia