During the Polish–Russian War of 1919‐1921, was chaplain of the 6th Sich Rifle Division, subordinated to the short‐lived Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, but cooperating operationally with the 3rd Polish Army. This army took part, among others, in the Polish Kiev expedition in 05.1920 and in subsequent operations against the Russian invasion, including the Battle of Komarów, the largest cavalry battle of the war and a turning point on the southern front, during which Polish forces routed the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny.

In the 1930s, recognized by the Polish authorities, including the authorities of the Polesia Voivodeship, where ministered, as a Ukrainian activist — i.e. ran in the elections to the Senate of the Republic of Poland on 23.11.1930 and took part in the „school referendum” campaign, expressing support for schools in the Ukrainian language, as well as the campaign to persuade the inhabitants of Polesia to declare their Ukrainian nationality during the 1931 census. In 1932, under pressure from the Polesia voivode, forced by his bishop to leave his parish and go into „retirement”.

From c. 03.1939 again in „retirement”, residing on his farm near the village of Udrytsk, c. 10 km north of the Vysotsk settlement, then in the Stolin county of the Polish Polesia Voivodeship, situated in the fork of the Horyn River and its tributaries Syrets (Seret) and Balamutka, in the Pripyat basin, near the Luninets–Stolin–Sarny–Rivne railway line. Vysotsk was then inhabited by an estimated 3,000 people, of whom Orthodox Ukrainians constituted c. 60%, Roman Catholic Poles c. 5‐10%, and Jews c. 25%. Generally, this reflected the national structure of the entire Stolin county, i.e. a significant majority of Orthodox Ukrainians, although the county also included c. 12% of Roman Catholic Poles, whose number was systematically growing due to the policy of the Polish state, which settled in Volyn — on lands derived from the division of large magnate estates — veterans of the wars for the Polish borders of 1918‐1921 and smallholders from western Poland.

After the German and Russian invasion of Poland in 09.1939 and the start of World War II, pursuant to the genocidal German–Russian agreement of 23.08.1939, known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, confirmed on 28.09.1939 by the so‐called „Treaty on the Borders and Friendship between Germany and Russia”, also known as the Second Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, his parish found itself in territory granted by thugs to Russia. The Russian occupation began. The Russians subjected Poles in particular to repression, arresting Polish intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, landowners, government officials, foresters, and policemen. In 1940‐1941, many Poles fell victim to four large waves of deportations „to Siberia”. Surveillance of the clergy, including the Orthodox, began. They were subjected to astronomical taxes, and religious education was removed from schools.

After the German attack on 22.06.1941 on its erstwhile ally, the Russians, the Ukrainian population of Vysotsk settlement welcomed the invading German soldiers — according to Jewish sources — with „bread and salt”. After the beginning of the German occupation, Vysotsk became part of the Germ. Bezirk Sarny (Eng. Sarny County) in the Germ. Generalbezirk Wolhynien–Podolien (Eng. Volyn‐Podolia General District) of the occupying administrative body of the Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Eng. Reich Commissariate Ukraine).

Prob. already then became the Germ. Bürgermeister (Eng. mayor) of Vysotsk. In practice, many „mayors” in the Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine were local Ukrainians, formally approved by the Germ. Gebietskommissar (Eng. district commissioner). Their scope of competences and responsibilities included supervision of the auxiliary police, i.e. the German Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Eng. Ukrainian Auxiliary Police), population registration, supply of contingents from peasants, organizing forced labor, provisioning, etc.

The German occupation also resulted in a division in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On 18.08.1941, in Pochayiv Lavra, the synod of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops proclaimed the establishment of the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church AUOC. The AUOC was to strive for autocephaly, i.e. independence, but recognizing the supremacy of the Moscow Patriarchate. In response, another group of Orthodox bishops announced on 08‐10.02.1942, the establishment of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church UAOC, under the auspices of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church PAOC, which in turn, as early as 1940, had made an act of loyalty to the German genocide killer Hans Frank, Germ. Generalgouverneur (pl. Governor General) of the German‐occupied and run quasi‐state called the Germ. Generalgouvernement (Eng. General Governorate), i.e. GG. In the territory of the Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the bishops of the AUOC recognized themselves as successors of the PAOC, whose autocephaly was granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It seems more than probable — his entire life path indicates this — that became involved on the side of the AUOC, and this meant supporting the increasingly radicalized Ukrainian nationalist movement, especially the genocidal OUN.

When the Orthodox bishops and clergy of debated the strategy, at the turn of 1941/1942, the Germans began implementing the genocidal plan Germ. «Endlösung der Judenfrage» (Eng. Final Solution of the Jewish Question). In Vysotsk, already in the summer of 1941, the Germans established the Germ. Judenrat (Eng. Jewish Council), responsible for the entire life of the local Jewish community, whose orders were to be enforced by the Germ. Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Eng. Jewish Order Service). Jews were forced to slave labor, and the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei committed robberies and blackmail against Jews. In 07.1942, the Germans organized a ghetto in Vysotsk, surrounding several buildings in the center of the settlement with barbed wire and bringing Jews from nearby villages and settlements there. More than 1,500 people were crowded in. Jews trying to escape from the ghetto were murdered. Early in the morning of 09.09.1942, a German genocidal unit of the Germ. Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS (Eng. Security Service of the Reichsführer‐SS), i.e. «SD», arrived in Vysotsk. With the participation of the local German gendarmerie and the collaborationist Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei, the ghetto was surrounded. According to Jewish sources, everyone was led — in three groups, along three different routes — c. 2.5 km south of the town, to a clearing/glade (Rus. лядо) by the Horyn River, and there they were all forced to lie down in one of the pits — each c. 100 x 10 m, dug under the pretext of building fuel tanks by local Ukrainians — and then they were all murdered. The pits were filled in by local Ukrainians. A total of 1,600‐1,800 people were murdered then. Those who managed to escape, e.g. by attempting to swim across the Horyn River, the Germans and the collaborating Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei pursued by boat, shooting those captured on the spot or driving them to the site of mass murder.

And immediately later, in 02.1943 Roman Shukhevych, nom de guerre „Taras Chuprynka”, the chief commander of the Ukrainian, genocidal OUN/UPA organisation, who in 1941 was a member of the Ukrainian Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall (Eng. Special Group Nightingale) — a unit of the Germ. Wehrmacht (Eng. Armed Forces) that took part in the German attack on Russians in 1941, accused of participating in the Jewish pogrom in Lviv in 1941 — and later a member of the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201 (Eng. 201st Protection team Battalion) — responsible for the murder of Jews and civilians in the territory of Belarus — issued in Volyn an order: „The extermination operation should be carried out according to the following principles: Polish villages are to be burned, and their populations massacred. Attacks on towns will take place in broad daylight, not at night. In mixed villages, the Polish population alone should be liquidated, and farmsteads should be burned only if they are 15 meters away and when there is no risk of the fire spreading to neighboring Ukrainian buildings. The Ukrainian population will receive instructions as to where to gather during the attack […] For every Ukrainian murdered, whether by Poles or Germans, 100 (one hundred) Poles will be executed”.

It was the de facto signal for the commencement of the «Genocidium Atrox» — i.e. the genocide perpetrated by Ukrainians, known as „Volyn genocide”.

A month later, in 03.1943, the UPA issued an appeal to members of the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei to desert and join the UPA ranks. Perhaps as many as 10,000 Ukrainians did so.

On 22.02.1943, near Vysotsk, Hryhorij Perehijniak was killed in battle with the Germans — a butcher‐cum‐génocidaire, sentenced in 1935 by the Polish authorities to life imprisonment for the murder of a Polish village head, released after the German attack on Poland in 09.1939, a trainee in the GG by the Germans and the OUN, a German saboteur in Volyn before the German attack on the Russians in 1941, and finally an officer of the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei, experienced in the genocide of Jews — commander of a unit considered to be the first UPA sotnya. The same one who commanded the UPA group that on 09.02.1943 rode „50 sleighs into Parosl”, a Polish colony in the middle of the forests near Horyn river, and murdered 155‐173 people. A witness described: „At 4 p.m., in individual houses, the sotnyks gave orders for all household members to lie down on the floor, as they would shoot at the supposedly approaching Germans and someone might accidentally get hurt or killed. When people were lying face down on the floor, the "partisans" chopped off everyone's heads with axes. Children's heads were hit with the butts of axes or hatchets. In some houses, Poles disobeyed orders and did not lie down on the floor, and the Ukrainians caught individual people and murdered them cruelly. Women had their breasts, noses, and ears cut off, their fingernails torn off, their hands and legs cut off, and their bellies ripped open. Men had their genitals chopped off, their hands, arms, and feet cut off piece by piece, their bellies ripped open, their eyes burned out with red–hot wires, their tongues, noses, and ears cut off, and salt poured over them. They chopped off heads in slices, piece by piece. These people were dying in terrible agony, and the murderers — the UPA "slayers" — with irony and a smile on their faces sneard: "Cursed Lachy, sons of dogs, this is your Poland, you will never see it again"”. The murder is considered the first act of the main wave of the «Genocidium Atrox».

Volyn was supposed to be drenched in Polish blood. And it was. Tens of thousands of Poles were murdered by the Ukrainians — with German passivity — in an extremely barbaric manner. Hundreds of villages were burned. The choice of Volyn for the beginning of the «Genocidium Atrox» and the genocide of Poles by the OUN/UPA was not accidental. Firstly, Volyn in pre‐war Poland had probably the smallest percentage of Polish population in the entire country. Secondly, it was probably the least economically developed voivodeship of Poland, which was caused by the deliberate policy of the Russians, ruling over part of portioned Poland in the 19th century — through Volyn runs the direct route to the heart of Russia, to Moscow, so no roads were laid there, no bridges built, no marshy areas around the Pripyat drained, no industry located, and no schools established. Thirdly, it was Volyn (and the Chełm region) that was recognized by the Central Powers, i.e. the German Empire and the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy, combatants in World War I, in the Treaty of Brest‐Litovsk of 09.02.1918, concluded with Bolshevik Russia, as part of the short‐lived Ukrainian state of the UPR. In 1943, the Germans simply fulfilled the obligations they had undertaken at that time.

And then was murdered, along with his wife.

Sources differ: Ukrainian sources attribute the murder to Russian partisans; Russian sources — to the Germans.

Ukrainian sources, speaking of partisans, mention — of course! — Poles among them. Others inform that the UPA reported that a group of Russian partisans named Kotovsky operated in the Vysotsk area — Grigory Kotovsky was a Bolshevik warlord — based in the village of Vyelegi/Velyuhy, which cannot be identified today, writing: „This group heavily robs the population, which is why people hate them as plunderers and drunkards”. They point to collaboration with the Germans as the cause of the murder.

Other sources, mainly Russian, point to the Germans as the perpetrators, without substantiating this thesis.

The corpse was allegedly set on fire along with the house.

On 12.10.2007, the génocidaire Roman Shukhevych was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. In several locations, monuments and commemorative plaques have been erected to this Lat. „hostis humani generis”, the schools and streets were named after him. génocidaire Hryhoriy Perehiyniak also has his own street, and Wikipedia states that preparations are underway in his home village to erect a commemorative plaque/monument.

Lat. „O Tempora! O mores!”