Aliaksei Viktaravich Pytsko (born 28 May 1983) is a priest of the Pinsk Diocese of the Belarusian Orthodox Church and a father of five. Originally from Lepel, he graduated from the Faculty of History of Vitebsk State University with a degree in Theology and later studied at the Minsk Theological Academy. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2007.
In the spring of 2026, it became known that the priest had been criminally prosecuted as part of the mass persecution of people accused of providing information to the Belaruski Hajun monitoring project, which, among other things, tracked the movement of Russian troops and military equipment through Belarus following the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Pytsko was prosecuted under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (“facilitating extremist activity”). The Brest Regional Court found him guilty and sentenced him to two years of restriction of liberty without placement in an open-type correctional institution, a form of punishment commonly known as “home confinement” (“domashnyaya khimiya”).
On 24 July 2026, the Belarusian Interior Ministry added Aliaksei Pytsko to its list of persons allegedly involved in “extremist activity.”
