A Jehovah's Witness, whom Russia had put on an interstate wanted list, was placed in a pre-trial detention center in Belarus.

In Belarus, on February 21, Nikolai Makhalichev, a resident of the city of Urai in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, was detained and three days later placed in a pre-trial detention center, the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia website reports .

The police stopped Makhalichev to check his documents and said that Russia had put him on the interstate wanted list on suspicion of professing a “forbidden religion.” Previously, a criminal case was opened against his fellow countryman Andrei Sazonov under articles on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and participation in it (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code).

On February 24, Nikolai Makhalichev was sent to pre-trial detention center-2 in Vitebsk. The grounds for detention were materials from the Russian court.

In Belarus, the prosecutor ruled that the arrested Makhalichev, exactly as the Russian investigation determined, acted “intentionally, motivated by religious intolerance, from extremist motives, expressed in promoting the advantages of followers of the religious teaching of Jehovah’s Witnesses over other persons,” and was also engaged in “profession and dissemination ideology and faith."

Nikolai Makhalichev applied for political asylum to the Belarusian authorities and filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee.

• On April 20, 2017, the Supreme Court recognized the “Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” as an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned its activities in Russia. In August, all Jehovah's Witnesses organizations were added to the list of prohibited organizations. After this, a stream of criminal cases against representatives of the confession began.
• In February 2019, the court handed down its first sentence with real imprisonment - Danish citizen Dennis Christensen was sentenced to six years in prison, his complaint was accepted for consideration by the ECHR. In Surgut, mass searches took place at the homes of followers of Jehovah's Witnesses. At least seven of them reported beatings, humiliation and electric shocks. OVD-Info published the story of the victims' lawyer.