"I Will Not Stop Being Christian" — Anastasiya Gaytur, Repressed Descendant, Convicted for Her Beliefs

On September 15, 2025, Judge Andrey Petrov found 29-year-old Anastasiya Gaytur guilty of extremism and fined 300 thousand rubles. "Faced with criminal prosecution for faith," the believer said in the Kurgan City Court, "I feel that they artificially want to make a criminal out of me."

Anastasiya argued her position as follows: "There is not a single negative characteristic in the case, there are no people whose lives I would spoil. Even the prosecution witnesses didn't say anything bad about me." According to the defense, for seven court sessions that took place over three months, only the religious affiliation of the believer was proved.

As a fourth-generation Jehovah's Witness, Anastasiya knows firsthand what repression for faith is: her relatives were deported from the Moldavian SSR to Siberia in the summer of 1949 as part of Operation South. The persecution of Anastasiya herself began in 2024, a year after a criminal case was opened against her father Aleksandr. Since then, the girl has faced a number of restrictions: recognizance agreement, blocking accounts, loss of job (she was a cleaner in the same court that considered her case).

Anastasia says: "It was difficult for my body to adapt to the new realities, it began to malfunction, so I had to go to the hospital." Anastasiya was able to cope with all the difficulties thanks to the help of loved ones. "They know better than anyone else what nerves and health this unfair persecution was given," she said. She also spoke warmly of her friends who comforted her, showed love and care, and gave her gifts.

The criminal prosecution had an impact on Anastasiya's worldview. "Although I have never lived richly and have always appreciated simple things," she admitted, "but with persecution, I began to thank God more for the fact that, for example, I spend the night at home in my cozy room, and not in a pre-trial detention center; I sleep on my comfortable sofa with a clean bed without cockroaches; I can eat and sleep as much as necessary; breathe deep fresh air; can see my family in person." At the same time, Anastasiya remains true to her beliefs: "I will not give up the chosen path and stop being who I am — a Christian."

In contemporary Russia, at least five families of Jehovah's Witnesses, including Aleksandr Gaitur, Ivan Shulyuk, Viktor Ursu, Yevgeniy Zinich, Aleksandr, and Mikhail Shevchuk, have been prosecuted on the same grounds on which their relatives were exiled to Siberia during the Soviet era.