Danil Suvorov poses for a photo with his mother after being released from the penal colony. April 2026.
Danil Suvorov poses for a photo with his mother after being released from the penal colony. April 2026.
On April 7, 2026, 30-year-old Danil Suvorov was released from a penal colony in Mordovia. He spent more than 4.5 years behind bars. The believer served his sentence 1,500 kilometers from home, far from family and friends. Many people traveled from afar to meet him on that day.
Before the criminal prosecution, Danil worked as a sales assistant in a tool store. In August 2021, his home was searched, and he was accused of extremism for conversations on Bible topics. In the summer of 2023, the court sentenced him to six years in prison. For almost three of those years, Danil was kept in a special block of a pretrial detention center (SIZO)—often in solitary confinement and without visits. He was then transferred to a penal colony, where he remained until his release. There he worked in a garment workshop and had a reputation as a conscientious worker. According to Danil, one of the prisoners said about Jehovah's Witnesses: "You are the kind of people who definitely shouldn't be here."
Every three months, Danil's mother visited him in the colony. Friends wrote to him regularly: "In the letters they encouraged me, and I encouraged others," he said. "It helped me to live, not lose heart, and stay occupied. [...] I sent many bags of letters home."
Danil warmly thanked everyone who helped him, including strangers. "Out in freedom, it's a small thing, but in prison even a little candy means a lot," he said, adding: "Without my friends' help, I simply wouldn't have had even basic food to eat."
After returning to Sochi, Suvorov's freedom will remain restricted for another year and a half.
At present, seven Jehovah's Witnesses under the age of 30 remain in custody.
