(OSV News) — One of two disappeared Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests seized from their church in Berdiansk in November of 2022 appears to have been illegally transferred to Russia, according to a human rights activist.
Redemptorist Father Ivan Levitsky is likely being held in an investigation prison in Russia’s Rostov region, according to Yevhen Zakharov of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Zakharov recently shared the update with Felix Corley of Forum 18, a news service that partners with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in defending freedom of religion, thought and conscience.
Father Levitsky’s fellow Redemptorist Father Bohdan Geleta, who served with him at the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos in Berdiansk, is reported to be held in a separate investigation prison in Russian-occupied Crimea. Father Geleta is known to suffer from an acute form of diabetes.
Standing with parishioners
Both priests had refused to leave their parishioners following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, which continued attacks launched in 2014 against Ukraine. Two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights have determined Russia’s invasion constitutes genocide, with Ukraine reporting more than 124,651 war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine since February 2022.
Corley told OSV News that based on his own efforts to contact multiple Russian investigation prisons, where accused are held during the pre-trial period, “there’s absolutely no confirmation” of where the two priests are.
“We called as many of (the prisons) as we could reach, and four of the five in (Russia’s) Rostov region said they did not hold Father Ivan, and of the three investigation prisons in Simferopol (in occupied Crimea), none of them would say they were holding Father Bohdan,” said Corley, adding that the three prisons in occupied Crimea “refused to give any information at all.”
In addition, Russian occupation officials have failed to provide Forum 18 with the exact charges against the priests, or name the Russian agencies handling the investigations.
At the same time, said Corley, “it does seem they (the priests) are alive,” but the Donetsk Exarchate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to which the priests belong, “has been very cautious.
“They told us that they just don’t know the exact location,” Corley told OSV News. “They don’t have (the) confirmation that Yevhen Zakharov had of one of them being in the Rostov region and the other in Crimea. They would not confirm that.”
Accused of storing weapons
The exarchate told Corley that the priests are constantly included in the prisoner exchange lists between Russia and Ukraine, but so far they have not been returned.
Neither the exarchate, nor the priests’ relatives and friends, have had contact with Father Ivan and Father Bohdan since they were abducted by Russian occupation forces.
According to Forum 18, both priests appear to be accused by Russian occupiers of storing weapons and explosives in their church, something the Donetsk Exarchate strongly denies.
Zakharov told Forum 18 at the end of January that no trials for the priests have yet taken place.
The Donetsk Exarchate also told Forum 18 that “all (its) priests have left” Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Shortly after Father Levitsky and Father Geleta were captured, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said he had received “the sad news that our priests are being tortured without mercy.”
Corley told OSV News that “initially in November 2022, there were reports they were being held in a detention center not far from Berdiansk, where they were seized,” adding that “torture is widespread among people that … Russian forces have detained or seized in occupied areas of Ukraine.
“This is well attested, and many exchanged prisoners who come back from Russia to Urkaine say that such torture continues even after any transfer to Russia itself,” he said. “So while it might be likely, there is no direct evidence that we have seen or that we have heard recently that they have been tortured. We just don’t have that information.”
‘Tight restrictions’
Yet even without confirmed reports of the priests’ torture, “Russian occupation authorities are consolidating their control over religious communities, and they are basically being treated as they would be in Russia itself,” said Corley, adding that means “tight restrictions … control … oversight … surveillance and intrusive monitoring of everything a religious community does.”
In December, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, or UGCC, announced it had obtained a copy of an order signed a year earlier by Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed head of the occupied Zaporizhzhia’s military-civil administration, declaring that the church had been banned and its property was to be transferred to his administration.
Also banned by the order were the Knights of Columbus and Caritas, the official humanitarian arm of the worldwide Catholic Church.
The order declared that the UGCC’s activities were in “violation of legislation on religious and public organizations of the Russian Federation.” It also accused the church’s leaders of working “in the interests of foreign intelligence services,” and said its parishioners had participated “in riots and anti-Russian rallies in March-April 2022.”
The order also claimed that UGCC churches and buildings stored “explosive devices and firearms weapons” and distributed “literature calling for the violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.”
UGCC communities were further accused of “active participation … in the Zaporizhzhia area in activities (of) extremist organizations and propaganda of neo-Nazi ideas.”
The document said that the Knights of Columbus were “associated with the intelligence services of the United States and the Vatican.”
Russian occupiers are also cracking down on other faith communities in Ukraine. On January 28, armed men in occupied Luhansk raided a Sunday morning worship service of the Council of Churches Baptist congregation in Sorokyne. The head of the Russian occupying police hung up when Forum 18 inquired about the raid.
In January, Russian occupying authorities registered two Pentecostal churches in occupied Luhansk, marking a first for Protestant churches there since March 2014. However, Forum 18 notes that other faith communities, communities — including other Christian denominations, Greek Catholics, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and Jehovah’s Witnesses (who have been banned in Russia since 2017) — have no possibility for any open existence under Russian occupation in Ukraine.
