Two separate criminal charges were filed against a Sakhalin-based believer based on the same subpart of the legal code

Two criminal cases were brought against Vyacheslav Ivanov from the town of Nevelsk under the same part of the "extremist" article (part 2 of article 282.2). Two large law enforcement agencies use serious resources to prosecute a civilian for believing in God and talking about the Bible.

The first criminal case was initiated by the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Nevelsk urban district. On August 29, 2019 Senior Lieutenant Ilya Antonov accepted the case for proceedings under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the grounds that Vyacheslav Ivanov "by prior conspiracy bypassed the residents [...] of the city of Nevelsk on behalf of a representative of a religious organization".

The second case was initiated by the Investigative Department of the FSB of Russia for the Sakhalin region, located in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. On October 14, 2019 Senior Lieutenant D.S. Melnikov initiated and accepted for investigation another criminal case under the same article against Vyacheslav Ivanov on the basis of the report of the operative officer. According to this document, the believer "is an active member of a religious association... Jehovah's Witnesses" and "involved new individuals in it."

As a result, Vyacheslav Ivanov, forced to simultaneously respond to various investigators, filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office against the actions of the authorities. However, Aleksandr Metelsky, senior assistant to the prosecutor of the Sakhalin region, refused to satisfy his complaint and "found no reason to connect the two criminal cases.

By mid-July 2020, a FSB investigator was ahead of his colleague from the Interior Ministry. On 14 July D. S. Melnikov brought an official charge against Vyacheslav Ivanov. He believes that the believer participated in criminal activity "on the instructions of Sergey Kulakov or Yevgeniy Elin" and "together with Kulakov and Kozlitin conducted psychological processing of Nevelsk residents in order to involve them in the activities of "Jehovah's Witnesses". (It is noteworthy that the entire family of Kulakovs — Kulakov Sergey and Kulakova Tatyana, as well as their son, Kulakov Dmitriy — are persecuted for their faith by various agencies).

What is happening to Vyacheslav Ivanov is not the first time that the state has spared neither efforts nor means to fight peaceful believers. For example, Nikolay Polevodov and Stanislav Kim from Khabarovsk are tried for their faith in two courts at once, while criminal cases on "extremist" articles have been reopened against Venera Dulova, her daughter Daria and Aleksandr Pryanikov after the conviction.

Law enforcers mistakenly accept the religion of citizens for participation in the extremist organization's activities. The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the decisions of Russian courts to liquidate and ban Jehovah's Witnesses organizations "do not evaluate the Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrine, and do not contain restrictions or prohibitions on individual practice of the above doctrine.