In the temporarily occupied Berdiansk, the Russian invaders detained priest Ivan Levytskyi, abbot of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
On November 17, the Russian military raided the building of the religious organization on Adam Mickiewicz Street, reports zprz.city.
Father Ivan Levytsky participated in pro-Ukrainian rallies and continued to pray every day at 12 o’clock by the street installation “I love Berdyansk”.
This is not the first reported case of abduction of representatives of a religious community in the temporarily occupied Berdiansk. The arrest of the head of the Lutheran community of Berdiansk, Artur Kozhevnikov, was reported earlier.
In Melitopol, the occupiers fell so low that they evicted a 74-year-old priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from his home.
They registered an elderly person as an “extremist” because he did not recognize the outcome of the sham referendum.
“In his speeches, he justified terrorism and denied the outcome of the referendum on reunification with Russia. On October 18, the man became the first to be expelled from Zaporizhia region after the referendum,” the occupiers reported.