Religious issues and persecution: Bimonthly Digest October 01-15
15.10.2025 – New searches at homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Birobidzhan.
JW – On October 9, 2025, law enforcement officers raided the homes of three female believers in Birobidzhan. One of them, Yelena Shestopalova, 60, is the mother of Vladlena Kukavitsa, who has been on trial for her faith for over a year.
Yelena was getting ready to go to her daughter’s trial when her house was searched. It happened at 7 a.m. Her husband, who was ill with SARS, was also in the apartment. Around the same time, searches took place at the homes of two other women and lasted from 1.5 to 3 hours. One of them was detained at her workplace. Electronic devices, Bibles, and personal notes were seized from the believers.
14.10.2025 – Freedom for 5 minutes — Vardan Zakaryan has served his sentence for his faith and awaits deportation to Armenia
JW – On October 13, 2025, Vardan Zakaryan’s imprisonment came to an end. After leaving the penal colony, he met his friends who had come to support him. The long-awaited meeting lasted only about 5 minutes — the believer was taken to a deportation center, where he is awaiting removal to his homeland.
In total, Zakaryan spent almost 5 years in various forms of detention. It all started with a violent search of his home in Moscow, after which the believer was hospitalized with concussion. He has not been free since: from the hospital he was taken to a temporary detention facility, then he was placed under house arrest for 2.5 years, after that about a year in a Moscow pretrial detention center and the rest of the term in penal colony No. 4 in Torzhok.
14.10.2025 – A sentence was handed down in St. Petersburg for a quote from the Koran near the church
Sova – On October 14, 2025, it became known that the Magistrate’s Court of the Judicial District N 153 of St. Petersburg sentenced 23-year-old Tatiana Kashirskaya, a graduate of the Institute of Music, Theater and Choreography of Herzen University. The court handed down a sentence under Part 2 of Article 214 of the Criminal Code (vandalism).
According to the court materials, on July 30, Kashirskaya wrote an inscription on the arch near the church of St. Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, referring to the verse of the Koran, which contains a call for the persecution of polytheists, with the help of aerosol paint. According to the press service, she did it for money, acting by agreement with an unknown person.
13.10.2025 – Penalty for storing a banned Islamic book in the KCR
Sova – On September 26, 2025, the Adyga-Khablsky District Court of Karachay-Cherkessia fined Faruk Kadad a thousand rubles under Art. 20.29 Administrative Code (mass distribution of extremist materials or their storage for mass distribution).
The reason was the discovery of the book of the Salafi theologian from Saudi Arabia Muhammad ibn Salih al-Usaymin “Comments on the Three Foundations” at his home (second edition; Cairo, 2014). This publication was recognized as extremist in 2016 and included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials.
The court decided to confiscate the book.
09.10.2025 – In Timashevsk, the prosecutor’s office is trying to liquidate the Baptist community
Sova – On September 26, 2025, it became known that in Timashevsk, Krasnodar Territory, the prosecutor’s office appealed to the court with a claim to liquidate the religious group of the International Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists (MSC EHB).
In June, representatives of the prosecutor’s office conducted a comprehensive inspection of the community’s activities and established that the religious group was operating without notifying the authorities of the start of activities.
09.10.2025 – The sentence of Jehovah’s Witnesses from Birobidjan has been approved
Sova – Earlier, Anatoly Artamonov and Alexander Krushevsky were found guilty by chch. 1.1 and 2 Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code and sentenced to five years of suspended imprisonment.
On October 2, 2025, the Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region confirmed the sentence of Jehovah’s Witnesses Anatoly Artamonov and Alexander Krushevsky under Parts 2 and 1.1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (participation in the activities of an extremist organization and involvement in it).
07.10.2025 – Court found one more peaceful believer from Karachayevo-Circassia extremist.
JW – A 3-year suspended sentence — this punishment was imposed on Svetlana Ogoreva, 41, from Mednogorskiy by the Zelenchukskiy District Court on October 1, 2025. Attending peaceful meetings for worship and talking about her faith was enough to find her guilty of participating in the activity of an extremist organization.
In her final statement before Judge Fatima Borlakova, Svetlana said: “Although my health has suffered greatly from this unfair and unlawful criminal prosecution, I feel the support of my God and friends and I am sure that whatever the outcome of this case, I will continue to feel this support. […] And I’m sure if my dad were alive, he would be proud of me. After all, I am not standing before the court for a bad deed, but for my faith in God.”
03.10.2025 – Jehovah’s Witnesses from Komsomolsk-on-Amur were sentenced to from 2 to 6 years of suspended imprisonment
Sova – On October 1, 2025, the Komsomolsky District Court of the Khabarovsk Territory announced the sentence to 10 Jehovah’s Witnesses. Believers Mikhail Dorofeev, Nikolai Kovadnev and Radion Shitov, accused under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of the activities of an extremist organization), imposed six years of suspended imprisonment and a ban on activities related to the leadership and participation in the work of public organizations for four years.
03.10.2025 – “We prayed and discussed the Bible.”
JW – On October 1, 2025, 10 Jehovah’s Witnesses from Khabarovsk Territory were convicted at the same time. “The charge for extremism is based on the testimony of interested persons and the assumptions put forward by them, which are not confirmed by evidence,” said one of the defendants expressing the collective position.
Judge Aleksandr Sokolov gave suspended sentences of 6 years to Mikhail Dorofeev, Nikolay Kovadnev and Radion Shitov and 2 years to Vasiliy Bondarev and his mother Irina, Sergey and Ulita Sachnev, Svetlana Zharkova, Marina Voytko and Ivan Nikitin. The prosecutor requested up to 7 years in a penal colony for everyone.
01.10.2025 – New searches in Vladivostok. Already more than 30 local believers are being prosecuted for their beliefs
JW – The investigation charged four Jehovah’s Witnesses from Vladivostok, including three elderly, with extremism. This happened on September 17, 2025, immediately after searches in the homes of peaceful believers.
Vyacheslav Yudin, 68, Sergey Isupov, 66, Sergey Chikichev, 64, and Andrey Yavniy, 58, do not agree with the charges. The latter appealed the charge in court. “Simply participating in a meeting for worship or reading the Bible is not a crime,” he said.
