For seven years, ecologist Iryna Vykhrystiuk, acting director of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, has been waging a real battle to preserve one of the jewels of the north-western Black Sea coast — the Tuzly estuaries in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District of Odesa Region. Throughout all seven years, attempts have been made to remove Vykhrystiuk from office because she prevents the theft of valuable state resources that belong to all the people of Ukraine.
Another attempt is now being made to “deal with” Vykhrystiuk: first Andrii Fihel, deputy head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, and then the head himself, Oleh Kiper, sent letters to Ukraine’s Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets demanding “appropriate managerial decisions” concerning the National Park leadership. The letters contain a number of accusations against the head of the institution. Vykhrystiuk is accused of inaction, deliberate unlawful acts, conscious violations of legislation, and ignoring initiatives of the Odesa Regional State Administration aimed at preserving and developing protected areas.
We will not examine all the arguments made by the regional leadership; the lawyers of the National Park administration will do that. As journalists of an environmental publication, for all seven years we have closely observed the work of Vykhrystiuk and the administration’s staff and helped them publicize the most significant events in the National Park. We therefore consider our view important in this confrontation.
We have therefore also decided to appeal to the Minister to protect Iryna Vykhrystiuk, and we ask citizens of Ukraine — first of all scientists, environmental defenders, volunteers and journalists, everyone for whom preservation of the Tuzly estuaries and the national nature park of the same name matters — to sign our appeal.
Open appeal of Ukraine’s environmental community to Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ruslan Strilets
Dear Ruslan Oleksandrovych!
Ukraine’s environmental community appeals to you to keep Iryna Vykhrystiuk in her position as acting director of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park.
Iryna Vykhrystiuk, head of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, has an impeccable reputation among the conservation community not only in Ukraine but around the world. She is sincerely supported by military personnel and volunteers who in peacetime took part in anti-poaching raids and conservation activities in Tuzly Estuaries National Park. Among Ukraine’s 55 national nature parks, the park administration is known for its principled position and uncompromising struggle against poachers and those who seek to destroy the emerging rule of law in our country.
It was under Vykhrystiuk’s leadership that the National Park territory was defended against the arbitrariness of unscrupulous businesspeople who for years, under the watch of local police and prosecutors, plundered natural resources for their own enrichment. Thanks to a principled legal position in the courts of Odesa Region and productive cooperation with the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, it was possible to free the Lebedivka forest tract from the unlawful commercial activity of sole proprietor Sachenko. The Lebedivka forest tract was cleared of clutter and obstruction.
Lebedivka forest before and after it was freed from the illegal business activity of sole proprietor Sachenko. Photo by V. Balinskyi
As you know, the natural complexes of the Black Sea estuaries located in Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park are wetlands of international importance protected under the Ramsar Convention. The Park territory is also part of Europe’s Emerald Network, protected under the Bern Convention, and has international conservation status.
However, gaps in the law allow local communities to include these especially valuable lands within the boundaries of their settlements without approval from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, without taking into account the protected status of these lands or the special requirements for their protection and use. The state is defending the territory of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park in court against “land grabbing” by local authorities. It was thanks to the National Park administration headed by Vykhrystiuk that in September 2023 the Park won a court case concerning expansion of the boundaries of the village of Prymorske, stopping the “carving up” of especially valuable lands of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park.
Almost simultaneously, thanks to the joint work of the National Park and the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Ukrainian courts, it was possible to return to the state a 1.3-hectare land plot located at the first kilometer of the Black Sea sand spit within Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, and to dismantle an entire scheme for illegally seizing one of the most valuable areas of the Black Sea coast that well-known Odesa businessman Valentyn Mohylnikov had been building for years.
PrJSC JV “Chornomorska Perlyna” must now return the “golden plot” to the state, that is, to the National Park.
Iryna Vykhrystiuk also prevents the establishment of a poaching scheme for commercial mullet fishing through the so-called fish-catching and passage channel illegally built by the Granit-2 cooperative at the second kilometer of the sand barrier in Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park. This illegal structure is also part of Mr. Mohylnikov’s long-running poaching business.
It was thanks to the meticulous legal work of Vykhrystiuk and her team that in 2021 the National Park won the case concerning this channel and the right to catch fish in it.
But even after a fair court decision was adopted, the struggle to ensure that the law prevailed did not end. The “fish mafia” could not accept that the National Park leadership would not allow it to catch the most valuable fish — mullet — without control.
Despite the court decision cancelling the permit, barbaric and illegal fishing continued by Granit-2’s successor, the Institute of Marine Aquaculture LLC. The illegal hydraulic structure — barrier nets installed across the artificial fish-catching and passage channel between the Black Sea and the estuary — was not dismantled. Therefore, in October 2021, in execution of the court decision, the Park Protection Service, assisted by environmental activists from Odesa, dismantled this illegal structure. Public order at the scene was maintained by 80 patrol police officers.
This is far from a complete list of the victories achieved by the administration of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park under Iryna Vykhrystiuk’s leadership in an unequal struggle to protect the richest resources of the “Tuzly Amazon.”
Today, an extremely dangerous situation has developed in the environmental sector of Odesa Region. Local “clans,” including public officials and local-government representatives, see environmental activity exclusively as a resource for their own enrichment. Only a few officials, supported by civic activists, are trying to resist such arbitrariness by local officials. Among them is Iryna Vykhrystiuk, who has become a symbol of resilience. This is precisely why representatives of these “clans” regard her as their enemy and want to remove her from the post of head of the Tuzly Estuaries National Park administration. Let us recall these people by name.
Oleh Muratov, former deputy head of the Odesa Regional State Administration
From 2016 to 2020 he headed the Southern Office of the State Audit Service. At the end of 2020 he became deputy to then head of the Odesa Regional State Administration Serhii Hrynevetskyi. After Maksym Marchenko became head of the military administration, Muratov remained deputy head. He consistently lobbied for Iryna Vykhrystiuk’s dismissal because, according to the article, he controlled poaching and depletion of natural resources in protected areas of Mykolaiv and Odesa regions. He had “his people” in the leadership of Biloberezhzhia Sviatoslava, Nyzhnodnistrovskyi and other national nature parks. He tried to appoint “his own person” as a nominal front in Kuialnyk National Nature Park. He has now been suspended from duty and is under investigation on charges of fraud on an especially large scale.
Odesa Regional Military Administration deputy head Oleh Muratov in court, Odesa, January 5, 2023. Photo: Suspilne Odesa
Hryhorii Melnychenko, former head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District Council of Odesa Region
He is the son-in-law of former Odesa Regional State Administration head Serhii Hrynevetskyi. He heads the NGO “Society of Hunters and Fishers of the 21st Century,” to which Hrynevetskyi, while serving as head of the Odesa Regional Council in 2001, with a stroke of the pen leased for 49 years 3,000 hectares of wetlands in the Dniester River delta within Nyzhnodnistrovskyi National Nature Park. Melnychenko also controls many hunting grounds in Odesa Region. In violation of the Water Code, he built up the shoreline of the Dniester near the village of Maiaky.
While serving as head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District Council, he lobbied for Iryna Vykhrystiuk’s dismissal because, according to the article, she prevented him from controlling commercial poaching and hunting operations throughout Odesa Region, including in protected areas. Demonstrating his position, he openly stated that he considered the Nyzhnodnistrovskyi and Tuzly national parks to have been created illegally, calling the leadership of those national nature parks “semi-criminal structures.” He was removed from office and came under investigation on allegations of the theft of a high-speed boat worth more than UAH 2.5 million belonging to the State Environmental Inspectorate of the South-Western Region.
Pavlo Bulanovych, former director of the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Odesa Regional State Administration
Using the search tag “Pasha 500,” one can review the activities of this lustrated official even before he became head of the State Environmental Inspectorate in Odesa Region and later, under Hrynevetskyi, headed the ecology department of the Odesa Regional State Administration.
In environmental matters, he was remembered as an unprincipled “schemer” and someone hostile to living nature. In 2021 he tried to cut down all the beautiful fifty-year-old blue spruce trees beside the Odesa Regional State Administration building. The destruction was stopped by environmental activists after five trees had been cut down. He lobbied for construction of a bypass road across the Kuialnyk Estuary floodplain. Throughout his work in the Odesa Regional State Administration, he obstructed Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park and tried to dismiss Iryna Vykhrystiuk. In 2023 he was caught up in a scheme involving illegal felling of more than 1,200 trees in the newly created Kuialnyk National Nature Park, with damages exceeding UAH 100 million, and was dismissed from his position.
Iryna Vykhrystiuk prevents not only former but also current officials from plundering natural assets. Thus, during 2023–2024, officials of the Southern Office of the State Audit Service, supported by Members of Parliament Oleksandr Tkachenko and Antonina Slavytska, under the guise of an audit attempted in every possible way to complicate the work of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, but demonstrated only their own incompetence and open lack of knowledge of current legislation. Distorted information was posted on the official State Audit Service website in an effort to discredit Vykhrystiuk. The article attributes the personal interest of Southern Office head Oleksandr Stavniichuk to his alleged role in corrupt environmental schemes in Odesa Region. Since 2014, Stavniichuk headed the State Environmental Inspectorate and later the State Environmental Inspectorate of the North-Western Black Sea Region. According to the article, he entered the environmental sphere in 2014 under Mykola Zlochevskyi’s “corruption quota.” Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, incidentally, filed a lawsuit over numerous alleged violations of current legislation by employees of the Southern Office of the State Audit Service in their dealings with the National Park.
After the actions of State Audit Service officials failed to produce the desired result, the effort to discredit Iryna Vykhrystiuk passed to senior officials of the Odesa Regional Military Administration.
One reason for the letters from Andrii Fihel and Oleh Kiper addressed to you may be the sharp criticism by Tuzly Estuaries National Park staff, including Iryna Vykhrystiuk, of the Regional Comprehensive Environmental Protection Program for Odesa Region for 2024–2028. In the environmentalists’ view, the program is a purely lobbying document, fails to reflect the current environmental situation in Odesa Region and wartime conditions in Ukraine, is financially unbalanced, and contains many errors. Environmental specialists agree that implementation of the UAH 4 billion program would only worsen the environmental situation in the region. In its current form, the program must be withdrawn and fundamentally revised.
Dear Ruslan Oleksandrovych. As head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, you are responsible for shaping and implementing state policy, including in such areas as environmental protection, environmental safety, forestry and hunting, and the rational use, restoration and protection of natural resources. We therefore ask you to defend Iryna Vykhrystiuk, acting director of Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, and the administration of this state institution.
We ask everyone who agrees with the content of this appeal and supports the National Park’s principled and consistent work to protect our shared natural heritage in Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park to sign it. As a signature, please provide your full name, contact details and the name of your NGO in a response on the website or as a comment under the Facebook post.