Biography
Yuriy Zalipayev was born in 1962 in Kuibyshev (now Samara). Seven years later, he and his parents moved to the Magadan region. In 1983, he married his former classmate Natalya and moved with her to the city of Mayskiy (Kabardino-Balkaria). Here Yuriy worked as a driver, a caretaker of a children's sports school and a welder. He is fond of poetry and airbrushing, loves hiking in the mountains.
Yuriy and Natalya began studying the Bible together with Jehovah's Witnesses in 1993, and a year later they were baptized as followers of this religion on the same day. The couple raised their three children according to the teachings and commandments of the Bible.
In August 2017, a criminal case was opened against this peaceful, deeply religious man under Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — "incitement to hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity." Investigators suggested that Yuriy allegedly publicly called on Jehovah's Witnesses to "beat Orthodox Christians and Muslims." This accusation not only did not correspond to reality, but contradicted all common sense, as well as well-known facts: the non-violence for Jehovah's Witnesses is so categorical that tens of thousands of believers of this religion preferred imprisonment, and sometimes certain death, refusing to serve in the armed forces of different countries.
On October 7, 2020, Нуlena Kudryavtseva, judge of the Mayskiy District Court of Kabardino-Balkaria, fully acquitted Yuriy Zalipayev. In February 2021, the prosecutor's office officially apologized to the believer for the erroneously initiated case.