Russian evangelical pastor Nikolay Romanyuk was recently sentenced to 4 years' imprisonment in a general-regime labour camp, plus a 3-year ban on administering websites after his release, for an “anti-war” sermon he gave in 2022, reports Norwegian human rights group Forum 18.

The 63-year-old pastor is the first person to be convicted of “public calls to implement activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, or to obstruct the exercise by government bodies and their officials of their powers to ensure the security of the Russian Federation”.

For pastor Romanyuk's daughter Svetlana Zhukova, "the case is completely fabricated, motivated either by someone's personal hatred or by a general mood. Dad was convicted for his opinion, his position. There is no crime. Not a single person suffered from his actions. The state did not suffer at all”.

“Romanyuk's prison term is unjustifiably cruel and unfair”, lawyer Anatoly Pchelintsev, who represented the interests of a witness in the case, said on Telegram.

The evangelical leader plans to appeal to Moscow Regional Court, although "we all understand perfectly well that there will be no fundamental changes", pointed out her daughter.

Romanyuk now remains in the pre-trial detention centre in Noginsk, where he has spent the more than ten months since his arrest in October 2024.

“Not our war”

Prosecutors denounced that, in a livestreamed sermon Romanyuk gave at Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church in September 2022, on the first Sunday after the announcement of partial mobilisation, he said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was “not our war”.

“Yes, I gave a sermon in which I touched on military, albeit forced, murder. I set forth my personal view and attitude towards the taking of a human life. That is my personal attitude as a clergyman. I do not retract my sermon”, stressed Romanyuk in his final speech to the court on 2 September.

He refused to plead guilty, stating that he had never called for any interference with or disruption to the work of enlistment offices, and that in the three years since he gave the sermon, nobody from his church had evaded mobilisation or obstructed the operations of military registration.

The other witnesses who had been present at the service confirmed what the pastor said, and two members of the church, an army lieutenant colonel and an employee of the Emergency Situations Ministry, testified that Romanyuk had never told them that they should leave military service.

Persecuted for opposing war against Ukraine

According to Forum 18, since February 2022, courts have sentenced four people to prison and fined three on criminal charges for “opposing Russia's war against Ukraine on religious grounds”.

Officials also opened three criminal cases against people who have left Russia, and have placed them on the Federal Wanted List.

Furthermore, Russia is experiencing an ever-increasing internet censorship. Websites are blocked for "extremist content", which include texts opposing Russia's war against Ukraine from a religious perspective; Ukraine-based religious websites; social media of prosecuted individuals, and news and NGO sites which include coverage of freedom of religion or belief violations.