A Volgograd Jehovah's Witness* has been released from prison.

Volgograd believer Valery Rogozin has been released after serving a prison sentence for extremism.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on September 23, 2021, a court found five Volgograd Jehovah's Witnesses* guilty of extremism. In their final statements, the defendants pleaded not guilty. The appellate and cassation courts rejected their appeals against the verdict. In December 2025, one of the men convicted in this case, 60-year-old Igor Yegozaryan, was released from prison. He was sentenced to six years, but actually spent about three and a half years in prison. Taking into account previous restrictions, his sentence was recalculated and he was released early.

Valery Rogozin was released from a prison colony in Udmurtia, according to a website covering the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses* in Russia.

"I feel great! Finally, I'm among friends. Although through letters, I always felt like I was part of my family," Rogozin was quoted as saying after his release.

Valery Rogozin is a former military pilot; before his arrest, he worked as a design engineer. In May 2019, he was detained at his workplace and sent to a pretrial detention center. "It was difficult to be in a cell where three out of four people smoked. "It's impossible to get used to the conditions in a pretrial detention center; you can only adapt to them," the former prisoner shared his memories.

In the penal colony, Rogozin worked in a sewing workshop. Shortly before his release on April 7, he reached retirement age, so he was no longer required to work.

Another of the men convicted in this case, Denis Peresunko, remains in custody. His release is expected in June 2026, according to the publication.

As a reminder, according to the defense, evidence presented in the trial court was unrelated to the charges or the defendants' religious views, and the religious expert examination failed to clarify the nature of the extremism alleged against the believers. The defendants' relatives noted that if they were imprisoned, their families would be left without breadwinners.

Back in October 2021, the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Russia ruled that individual or collective religious practice, religious rites, and ceremonies should not in themselves be considered the activity of an extremist organization unless they contain elements of extremism. However, in practice, state prosecutors have ignored this ruling.

On April 20, 2017, following a lawsuit filed by the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court of Russia declared the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia* and its 395 branches extremist organizations, banning their activities. The "Caucasian Knot" covers the consequences of this ban on the thematic page "The Ministry of Justice against Jehovah's Witnesses*".

* 396 Russian Jehovah's Witness organizations have been designated as extremist, and their activities in Russia have been banned by court order.

** Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.