Biography
In February 2019, one of the most massive and inhumane operations against believers took place in Surgut and several other cities of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. 7 people reported torture, 3 people were in custody for a long time, and the total number of defendants in criminal cases exceeded 20. One of them is Viola Shepel.
Viola was born in 1976 in the city of Stepnogorsk (Kazakhstan). She has a brother. Their father is an engineer, their mother is a computer operator of an instrument factory. Viola herself chose the medical path and graduated from the Tomsk Basic Medical College. She worked for 8 years in the oncology department of the clinic, and recently she has been working as a district nurse in the pediatric department.
When Viola was 3 years old, her family moved to Tomsk, Russia. In 2003, she got married and moved in with her husband in Surgut. Around the same time, she found in the Bible reasonable answers to her questions about the existence of God, the meaning of life, and relationships between people.
Viola and her husband Pavel have a daughter. The whole family loves to be in nature and travel, often organize holidays for friends.
Case History
In February 2019, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation initiated a criminal case against 18 men and 1 woman from Surgut (among them was a man mistakenly taken for one of Jehovah’s Witnesses). Their homes were searched. During the interrogations, 7 believers were subjected to violence. Artur Severinchik was sent to the pre-trial detention center for 29 days, and Yevgeniy Fedin and Sergey Loginov—for 56. Timofey Zhukov was unlawfully placed in a psychiatric hospital for 14 days. Believers filed complaints about the use of torture with the Investigative Committee, the ECHR and the Commissioner for Human Rights, a press conference was held with the participation of human rights defenders, but none of the law enforcement officers was brought to justice. In October 2021, the materials of the case, which in 2020 was separated into a different proceeding, went to court. Two years later, the court sentenced all believers to a suspended term from 4 to 7 years. In February 2025, the court of appeal upheld this verdict. A few months later, Igor Petrov learned that he had been deprived of Russian citizenship. He challenged this, and in June 2026, the Court of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area reinstated his rights.
