Victor Ursu has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment with the Russian occupation regime treating the 60-year-old, fourth-generation, Jehovah’s Witness as an ‘extremist’ for studying the Bible and worshipping with other believers. Victor is the second member of his family, after his father, Oleksandr Ursu, to have suffered from the religious repression Russia has brought to Crimea. His great-grandfather, grandfather and great-uncle were all imprisoned during the Soviet regime for their faith, with only his grandfather returning from the labour camp. In 1949, Victor’s father and other believers were deported, in cattle wagons, to Siberia. Judging by Victor’s final address, the family returned over fifty years ago, with the Russian invaders now reinstating Soviet repression.
The sentence, passed on 8 September 2025 by ‘judge’ Yelena Nikolaeva from the occupation ‘Dzhankoi district court’ is for six years in a medium-security prison colony, to be followed by a further year of restricted liberty. The sentence also includes a ban on involvement in the leadership or activities of a s ‘civic organization’ for five years.
Although the sentence is still subject to appeal, Ursu was taken into custody immediately.
Russia is using flawed ‘extremism’ legislation to try to bypass the prohibition on religious persecution stipulated in its own constitution, as well as in legally binding international agreements. All of the criminal prosecutions of believers in Russia and occupied Ukraine are based on the Russian Supreme Court ruling from 20 April 2017 which banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a purportedly ‘extremist organization’. While ‘investigators’ in occupied Crimea base such persecution on the same type of fake ‘expert assessments’; illicitly taped meetings and ‘secret witnesses’ as in other cases of persecution, all of this is aimed solely at ‘proving’ what the believers never deny, their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Victor Ursu (b. 24.06.1965) was convicted of ‘organizing the activities of an extremist organization’ under Article 282.2 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code. The prosecution ‘accused’ the believer of having “studied texts and religious provisions of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as of having coordinated meetings of believers.”
It is truly difficult to describe a ‘trial’ where a person is literally accused of studying the Bible, other religious texts, discussing them with fellow believers and worshipping together. In his final address, Victor Ursu stated simply that he is “no criminal, and no extremist”, and spoke of the importance of his religious faith.
All of this was heard by Yelena Nikolaeva and ignored, with the ‘judge’ passing the repressive sentence demanded of her.
Victor Ursu was detained on 28 July 2023 after armed enforcement officers burst into the home in Dzhankoi which he shares with his wife and elderly parents. As with all such searches (or ‘inspections’ as they are often, wrongly, called), the officers were interested only in ‘prohibited religious material’, etc., with all electronic devices and memory sticks taken away.
Ursu was then held in a detention centre for two weeks, with his wife prevented, not only from seeing him, but even from passing on vital medication, food and other items. He was supposedly released on 7 August 2023, only to be immediately seized again, taken to the Russian ‘Investigative committee’, and then to the same detention centre. It was then that criminal charges were formally laid under Article 282.2 § 1. He was placed under house arrest on 9 August 2023, with this changed 13 months later, on 9 September 2024, to an undertaking not to leave Dzhankoi.
Russia has already sentenced many believers from occupied Crimea to six or seven years’ imprisonment and both Victor and his wife, Marina, were doubtless prepared for him to be taken into custody in the ‘courtroom’. Worth stressing that the ‘court hearings’ were all attended by fellow believers, despite the real threat that the Russians could come for them next. Ursu will now be held in a SIZO [remand prison] in occupied Crimea until the appeal hearing.
This sentence comes just two weeks after another wave of armed searches in occupied Crimea. On 27 August 2025, eleven homes of believers were searched, with 52-year-old Volodymyr Chertov from Yalta taken into custody. He was later released, but will presumably be also facing charges under Article 282.2.
This, in turn, was a day after the first criminal charges were reported in occupied Donbas against a Jehovah’s Witness, identified only as ‘K’ (see: First criminal charges and imprisonment for studying the Bible in Russian-occupied Donbas
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ website speaks of 32 Crimean victims of such religious persecution, with very many of them serving long terms of imprisonment.
See, for example,
6-year sentences for prayer amid Russia’s mounting persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in occupied Crimea as well as details of other prosecutions here
