RUSSIA: Council of Churches of Baptist communities banned

Forum18 (20.08.2025) – Council of Churches Baptists continue to meet for worship outside their church building in Kurganinsk in Krasnodar Region, three months after bailiffs sealed it. They were enforcing a September 2024 court order prohibiting the activities of the 600-strong community unless it submitted notification of its existence. Courts have banned several other Council of Churches congregations, with prosecutors seeking more. Neither Krasnodar Regional Prosecutor’s Office nor Kurganinsk District Court responded to Forum 18 as to why they had been involved in prohibiting the church’s activities.

One community, in Kurganinsk in Krasnodar Region, has been regularly meeting for worship outside its building over three months since officials sealed it in May. Their appeal to the Supreme Court in Moscow is due to be heard on 28 August (see below).

“Last Sunday I witnessed church members old and young praying on their knees, right on the pavement,” a Baptist noted in late July. “The brothers have one heart and one spirit. The church defends its independence from the state” (see below).

Neither Krasnodar Regional Prosecutor’s Office nor Kurganinsk District Court responded to Forum 18 as to why they had been involved in prohibiting the church’s activities (see below).

The number of such prohibitions – imposed specifically for failing to notify Justice Ministry authorities of the beginning of a religious group’s activities – has risen noticeably in recent years, a lawyer familiar with the situation confirmed to Forum 18. So far in 2024-25, five churches have either already been banned or are facing lawsuits. In 2023 there appear to have been no such cases, with two in 2022 and one in 2021.

Despite prosecutors’ claims of protecting public order and state security by seeking bans on their activities, these communities do not engage in any violent or disruptive actions or violations of others’ human rights.

The recent trend of prohibiting Council of Churches Baptists’ activities appears to be particularly pronounced in the southern Krasnodar Region, with four of the known lawsuits taking place there. There have been others in each of the Mari El Republic and Ulyanovsk Region in central Russia, the Far Eastern Amur Region, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Western Siberia.

Exactly why Krasnodar Region should be seeing so many bans is unclear. It is likely partly linked to the high number of administrative prosecutions in the Region for “unlawful missionary activity”, which usually form part of the evidence in such lawsuits.

Why this practice appears to have accelerated recently is “difficult to say”, the lawyer added, but “In my opinion, the state is trying to give some legal status to communities in this way, so that it will be easier to control their activities”.

“Citizens have the right to practice religion together without creating religious associations. If citizens say that they have not created any group, then this is their legal right”, Sergey Chugunov, another lawyer who has worked on such cases, wrote on his Telegram channel. “To prove the opposite, criteria prescribed by law are needed.” Without such criteria, bans on individuals for meeting to exercise freedom of religion or belief “contradict the current law and the Constitution”.

“The problem is not being solved deliberately,” Chugunov believes. “Because if criteria for creating religious groups are prescribed [as the Religion Law currently does not], this will clearly distinguish this right from the right to gather without creating associations.” He blames the “regulatory authorities”, not believers, for “emerging tensions” in state-religious relations. “Believers are within their rights”.

So far, Council of Churches Baptists appear to be the only religious community affected by this trend, lawyers have told Forum 18. Some other communities also worship without either registering as religious organisations or submitting notification of the creation of a religious group. This means that it is technically possible that they too may be vulnerable to lawsuits. These may include some other Protestants and some Muslims (for example, small rural congregations, or students or migrant workers who worship together informally in hostels or workplaces).