Ivan Neverov with his wife Tatyana and Mikhail Shevchuk with his wife Yaroslavna near the district сourt in Saransk
Ivan Neverov with his wife Tatyana and Mikhail Shevchuk with his wife Yaroslavna near the district сourt in Saransk
On September 19, 2025, the court announced the decision in the case of Ivan Neverov and Mikhail Shevchuk, a descendant of Jehovah's Witnesses repressed in Soviet times. The court sentenced Ivan to 7 years in prison, Mikhail to 6,5 years. They were taken into custody in the courtroom.
Back in 2016, before the liquidation of Jehovah's Witnesses organizations in Russia, Neverov and Shevchuk witnessed searches in the worship building. "The riot police came together with employees of the Center for Combating Extremism and arranged another planting of literature," Ivan recalls.
Years later, Shevchuk's younger brother, Aleksandr, and Neverov's half-brother, Vladimir Atryakhin, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for their beliefs. Soon the believers themselves were searched. Ivan and Mikhail were accused of "organizing the activities of an extremist organization."
Not all relatives managed to cope with the shock. Shevchuk's wife, Yaroslavna, said: "My grandmother lived with us, she was almost 91 years old. She experienced very severe stress during the search. This knocked the rug out from under her feet. For six months she could not calm down and eventually died... My heart could not stand it."
During the preliminary investigation, the believers spent 2.5 months in a pre-trial detention center and more than 3 months under house arrest. At that time, it turned out that the law enforcement officers were wiretapping in Neverov's house. "The recordings are about two years old," Ivan said. "All our personal lives, someone has been eavesdropping. Very unpleasant."
The Proletarskiy District Court has been considering the case for the last six months; The trial was fast-paced, with four sessions per week, despite repeated requests from the defense to change the schedule. Such a pace inevitably affected the life of believers and their families. "I lost my clients," said Ivan Neverov, a master finishing worker. "Well, my reputation remains, and my friends help me with a job. But the hearings, the preparation for them... It was good if I could go to work for 2-3 hours once a week."
Ivan Shevchuk, a furniture maker and generalist, added: "If, for example, there were four days a week of trial, how much time could be left after it? And in what physical condition do you have to go to work..." As both men note, thanks to the efforts of their spouses and the support of friends, they did not need anything.
Ivan and Mikhail believe that their innocence has been proven. At one of the hearings, Shevchuk and Neverov provided the court with a table with 39 inconsistencies that they found in the testimony of witnesses. "Every time we asked the prosecution the question "where is extremism, where is at least one evidence, at least one word, statement", the officers who conducted operational activities said that they had not heard anything like that. Obviously, the whole accusation is false." Despite this, the prosecutor's office requested 8 years in prison for Mikhail and 9 for Ivan.
Mikhail Shevchuk is fourth-generation Jehovah's Witness. Back in the 1940s, two of his great-grandfathers were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment with confiscation of property and subsequent exile to Siberia. The repressions of believers in Soviet times ended with their rehabilitation. In contemporary Russia, the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses has resumed, despite condemnation from the world community.
