Judge Yevgeny Parshin of the Balashikha City Court found 63-year-old Pentecostal Church minister Nikolay Romanyuk guilty under the article on calls for activities directed against state security on the Internet.
The priest was sentenced to 4 years in a general regime penal colony and a three-year ban on website administration, our correspondent in court reports. The prosecutor requested 4.5 years in prison for the defendant.
According to investigators, Romanyuk “called for activities directed against state security” in an anti-war sermon published on his church’s channel in September 2022.
In his instruction, the pastor compared participation in war with sinful temptations and called on parishioners not to participate in military operations:
“I would say this: when you are offered a dose, when you are offered a bottle of alcohol, or you are given a summons to send you to combat operations – this is the same sin, and the same drug, and the same Satan. And a believer… Find me in the Old Testament, even a hint that we could somehow participate. And it does not matter which king calls for this – the Ukrainian king, the American king. Or our king calls for this. <…>
Our doctrine stated that we are pacifists and cannot participate in this <…> We do not bless those who go there, who are taken by force, we do not bless them, but we pray that they are rescued from there. There are various legal ways to do this.”
Nikolai Romanyuk is the senior pastor of the evangelical “Holy Trinity Church” in Balashikha, the father of nine children. On 18 October 2024, a search was conducted in the Romanyuk family’s home. The priest was detained with demonstrative cruelty, and his children were kept face down on the ground in the yard of the house for about 12 hours. On 20 October, Romanyuk was sent to a pre-trial detention centre.
According to Memorial, the pastor lost weight dramatically while in prison and may have suffered a microstroke. His vision and hearing deteriorated sharply.
