"I Will Not Stop Being A Christian" — Anastasiya Gaytur, Descendant of Victims of Repression, Convicted for Her Beliefs

On September 15, 2025, Judge Andrey Petrov found Anastasiya Gaytur, 29, guilty of extremism and fined her 300,000 rubles. "Faced with criminal prosecution for my faith, I feel that they artificially want to make me a criminal", she said in the Kurgan City Court.

Anastasiya argued her position as follows: "There is not a single negative aspect in the case, there are no people whose lives I would have ruined. Even the witnesses for the prosecution didn't say anything bad about me." According to the defense, during seven court sessions which took place over 3 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 prosecution of Anastasiya began in 2024, a year after a criminal case was initiated against her father Aleksandr. Since then, she has faced a number of restrictions: a recognizance agreement, blocked accounts, loss of her job (she was a cleaner in the same court that considered her case).

Anastasiya 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 how my nerves and health were affected due to this unfair prosecution," 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 view on life. "Although I have never been well-off and have always appreciated simple things, but with the prosecution," she admitted," I began to thank God more that, for example, I spend the night at home in my cozy room, and not in a pretrial detention center; I sleep on my comfortable sofa with clean bed linen without cockroaches; I can eat and sleep as much as necessary; breathe fresh air; see my family in person." At the same time, Anastasiya remains true to her beliefs: "I will not give up the path I have chosen nor stop being who I am — a Christian."

In present-day Russia, at least five families of Jehovah's Witnesses, including Aleksandr Gaytur, 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.