Another Believer from Volga Region, Sergey Melnik, Leaves Penal Colony — 6-Year Term Served

Sergey Melnik, 53, one of Jehovah's Witnesses from Volgograd, spent more than 4 years and 9 months in prison. His term for his faith ended on December 18, 2025. Sergey left the penal colony in Kirovo-Chepetsk, from where he will take a train home the next day.

Melnik was first put behind bars in May 2019 — he was placed in a pretrial detention center following a search; later, after the verdict was announced, he was sent back to the detention center. "The hardest part was enduring isolation and worrying about my family. I didn't know what was happening with them," Sergey recalls. "No letters, no visits, no phone calls." Later, Sergey was allowed to correspond. "In the letters, we could chat about everyday things and feel as if we were together," Melnik added. "Through friends, I even managed to send my wife bouquets with cards."

Sergey was in the penal colony from March 2022. There, he could keep in touch with relatives through short phone calls. Family and friends continued writing to him, and a few months before his release, the number of letters reached 5,000. Melnik tried to reply to each one, devoting his free time to this. Sergey is passionate about football, so friends wrote to him about what was happening in the league .

While in prison, Sergey trained as a cook and worked in the cafeteria 2 days on, 2 days off. "At first, it was hard even to do chopping, memorize recipes and their sequence, but then I got the hang of it and started doing everything quickly," he says. The work was physically demanding: he had to get up earlier than others and spend the whole day on his feet, serving more than a thousand inmates three times a day. This workload didn't stop Sergey from loving cooking: he prepared meals together with other inmates in his unit and shared unusual recipes with them.

The attitude of staff in the penal colony and inmates toward Sergey was friendly; many were surprised by his optimism and cheerful nature. "The guys there called me 'the man with the smile.' They used to say: 'Seeing Sergey standing there smiling when we walk into the cafteria, makes our day,'" recalls Melnik. The believer received no awards.

At time of publication, in 2025 15 of Jehovah's Witnesses have been released from Russian penal colonies. Another 126 believers are still serving time in prison.