"Freedom is not Where You Are, But Truth Within." Court in Crimea Imposed Suspended Term on a 70-Year-Old Believer

The Razdolnenskiy Court announced its decision on October 17, 2025: Judge Maria Bedritskaya sentenced Tamara Brattseva to 6 years and 3 months suspended. The investigation claimed that the believer was an organizer of the activities of an extremist organization.

A few months earlier, the prosecutor had requested that Brattseva be sent to a penal colony for 6 years and 4 months. Tamara's lawyer commented on this during the debate: "The fact that the prosecution is asking for such a cruel punishment - imprisonment for a person whose only 'guilt' is that she prayed, read the Bible and sought to live according to her conscience - is not just a legal error. This is a moral fall." After the debate, the court continued the proceedings, but the prosecutor did not change his position - the second request for punishment was the same.

Tamara Brattseva has been living in Razdolnoye, a village with a population of about 7,000 people, for more than 40 years, almost 35 of which she worked as an occupational safety engineer in a regional consumer society. "If I were engaged in extremism, I could not remain Jehovah's Witness, since I would no longer meet the requirements of the Bible," Tamara said in court. She stressed that she was a believer long before the legal entity of Jehovah's Witnesses appeared in the village, and continues to practice her faith regardless of its existence.

During one of the court hearings, Tamara's husband, with whom they have been together for 50 years, had an accident on the way to get medicine. In the hospital, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and a hematoma. This news shocked the defendant, at the hearings her blood pressure rose significantly, she had to take medications right in the hall. As eyewitnesses noted that the believer was about to lose consciousness.

Tamara considers herself innocent. "Real freedom is not where you are, but the presence of truth within," Tamara Brattseva said at one of the hearings, commenting on the threat of imprisonment.

The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Crimea continues. In this territory, criminal cases have been initiated against 33 believers.