Court in Sverdlovsk Region Passes Guilty Verdict for Faith. Three Jehovah's Witnesses Received Six-Years Suspended Sentences

The city court of the town of Lesnoy found three local believers guilty. On November 25, 2024, Andrey Kozhushko, Andrey Bannykh and Pavel Loshchinin were sentenced to suspended sentences. Religious meetings, during which biblical teachings were discussed, were equated by the court with organizing the activities of an extremist organization.

The investigation lasted about a year. The Sverdlovsk Region Office of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened the case in March 2023, and in May of the following year it was submitted to the city court for consideration by Lyudmila Yerzikova. The prosecutor requested 7 years of real imprisonment for three defendants, including Andrey Kozhushko, 49, a disabled person of group II. Believers do not agree with the verdict.

"I saved dozens of lives, for which I received a government award," said Pavel Loshchinin, 37, in his final statement. "And now my life can be completely crossed out and it will be like a struggle for survival, because [it] is branded as an extremist. I will never put up with this stigma." Andrey Bannykh, 60, said that a person who lives according to God's laws cannot be an extremist: "Jehovah's Witnesses invariably respect and obey the authorities in the country where they live." Andrey Kozhushko expressed bewilderment: "What is being done against me and other [Jehovah's] Witnesses—false accusations of extremism, interrogations, detentions, searches, torture, confiscations, blocking of bank cards and accounts—is clear persecution for my faith, in a word, repression. All this is happening in relation to the peaceful and respectable citizens of their country . . . I just can't wrap my head around it."

This is not the first conviction of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Sverdlovsk region. From one year to two and a half years of suspended sentence after 4 appeals, Aleksandr Pryanikov, Venera and Darya Dulova received suspended sentences.