Crimean political prisoner Yevgeny Zhukov was released after six years in prison
Crimean political prisoner Yevgeny Zhukov has been released and is now free. On June 17, he made his first comments since his release.
This was reported by the Office of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, according to Ukrinform.
“Yevgeny Zhukov, a resident of Sevastopol and a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, has been released after serving his sentence in a Russian prison,” the statement reads.
“Freedom was always with me,” Zhukov said immediately after his release from a prison colony in the Yaroslavl region of the Russian Federation.
The Office noted that in 2020, Zhukov, along with Volodymyr Maladyka and Volodymyr Sakada, were detained by the occupying forces. All three were accused of organizing the activities of an “extremist organization,” namely the “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” of which they were members.
The charges were based on video recordings of four Jehovah’s Witnesses worship services made by undercover FSB agents. At the same time, during the trial, an FSB officer admitted that the men’s actions showed no signs of extremism or incitement to religious hatred. Despite this, they were sentenced to six years of imprisonment in a general-regime penal colony.
It is noted that Maladyka and Sakada remain in Russian custody.
“These cases demonstrate that Russia not only restricts freedom of religion on the peninsula but also systematically persecutes people for their religious beliefs,” the mission added.
As a reminder, political prisoner Andriy Kolomiyets returned to Ukraine after 10 years of imprisonment in Russia.
