Russian pastor handed 4-year prison sentence for anti-war sermon

A pastor from the Moscow region has been sentenced to four years in prison for a pacifist sermon he gave in the first days of Russia’s partial mobilisation drive in September 2022, human rights group OVD-Info reported on Wednesday.

Nikolay Romanyuk, a 63-year-old minister with the Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church in the city of Balashikha, was convicted of calling for action that would undermine state security. He first came to the authorities’ attention for a sermon he delivered on 25 September 2022, just days after Vladimir Putin announced the first partial mobilisation in Russia since Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. In his sermon, Romanyuk preached that Christians were forbidden from fighting in wars, including the war in Ukraine, according to OVD-Info.

“Whether you are offered drugs or alcohol or handed call-up papers, it is the same sin and … the same Satan. … And it doesn’t matter whether it’s the Ukrainian tsar, the American tsar or our tsar giving the order.”

Romanyuk said prayers would be offered for anyone forced to go and fight “to be rescued”, adding that there were “various legal ways that that could happen”.

Romanyuk’s daughter wrote on Telegram in June that since her father was placed in pretrial detention in October, he had lost 40kg and had “suffered something like … a mini-stroke. We don’t know for sure”.