Igor Saletsky

Igor Saletsky

Head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration, director of the municipal enterprise “Administration of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve in the city of Sviatohirsk”.

Ihor Saletskyi became one of the most prominent representatives of the so-called “black registrars” in Ukraine. “Black registrars” are employees of regional state administration apparatuses who carried out illegal registration actions with regard to legal entities.

Saletskyi personally and unlawfully re-registered UOC religious communities into the OCU, thereby directly facilitating raider seizures of churches.

The official became the first – and, unfortunately, the only – “black registrar” whom law enforcement agencies attempted to bring to justice for crimes against Orthodox Christians.

October 4, 2019 – In Vinnytsia, the court began hearing a lawsuit against the head of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration’s department for religious affairs, Ihor Saletskyi, who was accused of illegally re-registering religious communities of the Vinnytsia Eparchy of the UOC into the OCU.

The head of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration’s department for religious affairs was to be suspended from his duties for two months.

The police served Ihor Saletskyi with a notice of suspicion for “self-will” (arbitrariness) during the unlawful re-registration of UOC churches in the villages of Luka-Meleshkivska and Velyka Kosnytsia.

In addition, the official was suspected of document forgery and abuse of authority as a person providing public services.

Ihor Saletskyi himself rejected the accusations and claimed that the religious communities of the UOC churches he re-registered – including the church in Luka-Meleshkivska – had allegedly expressed a desire to join the new church structure.

“This is direct pressure on me, because I was carrying out my official duties in accordance with the law and did not grant anyone any advantages. There is a meeting and decisions of the religious community about transitioning to the OCU, and we accept the relevant documents from people,” Ihor Saletskyi said in court. “In particular, in this case we are talking about the already well-known Luka-Meleshkivska and Velyka Kosnytsia in the Yampil area.”

The defendant called suspicions that he might destroy or hide documents that would confirm his guilt “complete nonsense” and “pressure” on him from the police.

According to Ihor Saletskyi, he learned about the court too late and therefore was unable to hire a lawyer. According to the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration employee, for this very reason he asked the court to postpone the hearing to Wednesday, when he would be able to “defend himself according to the rights of a citizen of Ukraine”.

He accused the plaintiffs of allegedly “pressuring him with suspension”.

Investigating judge Ihor Vyshar granted Ihor Saletskyi’s request and ruled to reschedule the hearing to 11:00 on October 10, 2019.

October 10, 2019 – Another court hearing in Vinnytsia in the case of Ihor Saletskyi.

As a result of the hearing, the Vinnytsia City Court ruled to suspend Ihor Saletskyi from performing his duties for two months.

OCU supporters held pickets first outside the National Police building and then outside the Vinnytsia City Court.

“Inside the court there were also some OCU representatives, specifically from Luka-Meleshkivska, there was one priest whom I personally do not know, and he did not behave very correctly,” added the spokesperson of the Vinnytsia Eparchy. “Right in the court corridor, when a recess was

announced for the decision to be made, squabbles began, OCU parishioners shouted their usual ‘get out, Moscow priest,’ ‘get out of Ukraine,’ everything in raised voices.”

According to him, after the decision was announced, about 30 people from among OCU supporters were outside the courthouse, including representatives of the “clergy”.

October 18, 2019 – The Vinnytsia Court of Appeal invalidated the decision of the Vinnytsia City Court to suspend Ihor Saletskyi for two months from performing the duties of head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration.

The Vinnytsia City Court motivated its suspension decision by stating that Ihor Saletskyi could influence witnesses and destroy important documents in the case concerning the unlawful re-registration of UOC religious communities in the Yampil district and in Luka-Meleshkivska into the OCU.

According to Ihor Saletskyi’s lawyer, Tetiana Kashpruk, the official’s alleged offense falls into the category of minor crimes, and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine provides that suspension from office may be applied only to crimes of medium gravity.

Ihor Saletskyi and his lawyer also denied the possibility that Ihor Saletskyi could use his official powers to destroy documents in the case or pressure witnesses.

The prosecutor objected to granting the appeal.

The judges spent about 20 minutes in the deliberation room, after which they decided to uphold Ihor Saletskyi’s appeal.

(Source: UOJ)

October 26, 2019 – The Vinnytsia Eparchy of the UOC reported that the official is not afraid to disregard law and morality, supporting exclusively the OCU.

The statement was published after the appearance of Ihor Saletskyi, head of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration’s department for religious affairs, on one of the TV channels.

The eparchy believes the official “once again demonstrated that his position serves the interests not so much of the state as of the Vinnytsia–Bar Eparchy of the OCU”.

“It would seem that a civil servant should take a neutral position, being, so to speak, above the conflict,” the statement says. “However, Ihor Saletskyi’s actions show that in the interconfessional conflict the head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration acts exclusively in the interests of the OCU, while fully understanding that he is breaking the law.”

A vivid and far from the only example of this, the eparchy says, is the situation with the registration of a change of affiliation of the religious community of the village of Luka-Meleshkivska.

At the same time, Ihor Saletskyi’s stance forces him “to improvise unsuccessfully, inventing terms that exist neither in the law nor in the statute, such as ‘rank-and-file members of the religious community’.”

“Trying by any means to present his own arbitrariness as the performance of official duties, Ihor Saletskyi claims that the decision on changing affiliation is made at a general meeting of ‘rank-and-file members of the religious community,’ apparently believing that in this way he will be able at least somehow to ‘attach’ to the religious community people who had no and have no relation to it, but who want the local church to belong to the OCU,” the eparchy press service noted.

In his appearance, Ihor Saletskyi persistently proposed introducing alternating services in disputed churches, and “such proposals from time to time also come from OCU clergy – supporters of this structure have repeatedly sent official appeals to the Vinnytsia diocesan administration with proposals and even demands to allow alternating services in certain churches of the Vinnytsia Eparchy.”

“At present there is hardly any sense in repeating well-known truths that alternating services can be a compromise option only in churches that are pan-Christian shrines jointly owned by several confessions. Or in reminding that the practice of alternating services contradicts the canons and is unacceptable for the clergy and faithful of the UOC,” the press service noted.

At the same time, the eparchy emphasized that in villages where OCU communities demand alternating services in churches, there are every opportunity to build their own churches, and the leadership of the Vinnytsia Eparchy of the UOC has repeatedly offered them help in construction, “but the latter, even having the opportunity to build themselves their own church, continue to insist on alternating services. That is, on creating a situation where one church would have to be shared by two confessions.”

“At the same time, the community of the Transfiguration Cathedral has for several months been praying in the open air, despite the weather, which is worsening every day, while Metropolitan Simeon has at his disposal both the cathedral building itself and the lower church, which stands almost always empty. It would also be worth mentioning the village of Makhnivka in the Koziatyn district, where a priest, having moved to the OCU, took with him three churches at once and now refuses to let the UOC community even into the church in which he does not serve at all, using the premises to store construction materials. However, neither to Metropolitan Simeon nor to the priest-defector from Makhnivka did Ihor Saletskyi propose alternating services,” the eparchy press service noted.

In conclusion, the Vinnytsia Eparchy of the UOC urged Ihor Saletskyi to remember the ethics of a civil servant:

“As we see, an ordinary official is not afraid to neglect law and morality while supporting a particular confession. Yet is it not time, finally, to recall decency, honor, and the ethics of a public servant?”

(Source: UOJ)

October 30, 2019 – Investigators seized registration and founding documents from Ihor Saletskyi’s workplace related to the registration of OCU religious communities in the village of Novozhyvotiv (Orativ district) and the urban-type settlement of Vapniarka (Tomashpil district) of Vinnytsia region.

The search was conducted pursuant to a court ruling on the seizure of documents, within the framework of a criminal proceeding opened against the official over the unlawful re-registration of UOC communities into the OCU.

Ihor Saletskyi, suspected of exceeding his authority, who on that day was supposed to be present at a court hearing in Trostianets and “represent the interests of the state,” said that two weeks earlier an investigator had already seized an entire range of documents from him, and that the new search was nothing other than an attempt to prevent him from performing his official duties.

(Source: UOJ)

November 14, 2019 – Human rights advocate Lesia Aleksandrydi said that pressure is being exerted on law enforcement officers conducting investigative actions in criminal cases involving Ihor Saletskyi, head of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration’s department for religious affairs.

On the air of “Pershyi Kozatskyi” (“First Cossack”), she spoke about coordinated actions by the official’s supporters – protests, threats to block roads, or to blockade government bodies.

“It is very telling that clergy of the newly created OCU structure participate in these events using explicitly inadmissible and insulting slogans,” Aleksandrydi noted.

A public audit of the religious convictions of law enforcement representatives is absolutely unacceptable, the lawyer emphasized.

“The UOC is registered and operates within the framework of Ukrainian law, and its parishioners are not some sort of second-rate, ‘incorrect’ citizens,” she reminded.

According to the expert, in statements by Ihor Saletskyi’s representatives, the very fact of the existence of criminal proceedings against the official and the fact that a UOC church exists on the territory of the Vinnytsia police department “already allegedly testifies to some kind of lobbying for the interests of this particular confession and to an anti-Ukrainian position of law enforcement officers”.

Such statements are aimed exclusively at manipulating public opinion, the lawyer concluded.

(Source: UOJ)

December 6, 2019 – 25,265 people from the Vinnytsia and Tulchyn Eparchies of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church signed an open appeal of clergy and faithful to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The papers were delivered to the President’s Office by Metropolitan Varsonofiy of Vinnytsia and Bar, and Metropolitan Ionafan of Tulchyn and Bratslav, the Vinnytsia Eparchy reported on its Facebook page.

The appeal speaks of oppression of UOC religious communities in the Vinnytsia region, since the head of the Department for Religious Affairs of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration, Ihor Saletskyi, is lobbying the interests of the OCU. The faithful reported raider schemes for seizing churches and an interconfessional conflict in the village of Luka-Meleshkivska that had been ongoing for about half a year. The faithful are also outraged by the fact that, for various artificially created reasons, Metropolitan Varsonofiy of Vinnytsia and Bar has been denied state registration as head of the eparchy for about a year.

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December 3, 2021 – A prayer vigil took place outside the building of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration, held by believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who were concerned about an attempt to unlawfully re-register UOC communities in the villages of Bakhtyn, Verbovets, and Snitkiv in the Vinnytsia region.

This is far from the first attempt at church raiding against these communities.

A group of believers arrived despite the fact that the police impeded their departure for the prayer service. There was a large police presence on site, as well as National Guard vehicles. The prayer service passed without incidents.

After the prayer service, the faithful were going to deliver a statement demanding the resignation of the head of the department for religious affairs of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration, Ihor Saletskyi, who bears direct responsibility for re-registering communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church against their will.