Jacob Martynenko

Saint Jacob Ilyich Martynenko, hieromartyr, was a priest in the Kharkiv diocese and received the martyr's death by shooting on 16 December 1937, during the Soviet persecution. He is venerated as a local saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and commemorated on 19 May.

He was born on 4 January 1871 in the village of Korotych in the Kharkiv governorate. He was a priest in the village of Malinovka, Chuguev district, Kharkiv region, but at the time of his arrest he was no longer serving. He was arrested on 20 October 1937 and sentenced to death. He was shot on 16 December 1937 in Kharkiv.

On 22 June 1993 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on his local canonization in the Kharkiv diocese, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Sloboda land. The service of glorification took place on 3 and 4 July 1993 in the Annunciation cathedral of Kharkiv, during the visit of Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and all Ukraine.

His canonization is local and not that of the whole Orthodox Church.