Court in Birobidzhan Sentences Elderly Believer — Fine for Collective Singing and Prayers

On October 1, 2026, the Birobidzhanskiy District Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region found Natalya Kocheva, 64, guilty of participating in the activity of an extremist organization. Judge Yuliya Tsykina imposed a fine of 40,000 rubles. The prosecutor requested a three-year suspended sentence.

In her final statement, Natalya quoted the aphorism by Kozma Prutkov, "If you read the word 'buffalo' on an elephant's cage, do not believe your eyes," and suggested the court decide for itself what to believe: "whether it is what someone wrote on paper that I am a criminal, or what the court sees with its own eyes—proof of my innocence before the law."

At one of the hearings, Natalya drew attention to two expert studies at the core of the charges. One of them was conducted by an officer of the Federal Security Service Directorate. "In his conclusions, the expert did not cite a single phrase of mine that contained signs of incitement to hatred or... extremism," Natalya noted. She described the second, linguistic, expert conclusion as inadmissible evidence: this expert study was conducted by a non-state organization, which, according to a Russian Government decree, is not permitted in extremism cases.

In April 2025, Investigator of the Federal Security Service Directorate Dmitriy Yankin interrogated Natalya as a witness in the case of Oleg Postnikov. Six months later, Yankin initiated a criminal prosecution against the believer herself. The trial on the merits continued from April 2026.

Birobidzhan remains a center of active persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Criminal cases in this city have already been initiated against 30 believers.