Aleksandr Filatov with his wife, Yelena, and their two sons in front of the penal colony where the believer was serving his sentence, July 2026.
On July 9, 2026, Aleksandr Filatov, father of two minor children, convicted for his faith, was released from the penal colony. He was separated from his family for 5 years. His wife, Yelena, says: "Neither our love for God nor the love between me and my husband has suffered — rather they've grown stronger and more tender."
According to Aleksandr, the penal colony is a place where hardships, and sometimes pressure from others, is common. "Don't let yourself be gripped by fear or dwell on what bad things could happen. That only drains you emotionally," the believer explained after his release. "Yes, being in prison is unnatural. You just need to shift your focus to something positive." In the penal colony, Aleksandr proved himself to be a conscientious worker; he was the only electrician in his unit. He was respected for his professional skills.
At the time of Aleksandr's arrest, his younger son was only 2.5 years old. Yelena coped with the children on her own; she took parcels to the pretrial detention center. Whenever she had a chance to visit Aleksandr, she tried to take the children, especially the younger one, so he would not forget his dad. "Every time, we sang a children's song together," she recalls. "Afterward, the staff would tell each other with surprise that we were singing during the visit." Aleksandr made crafts and toys for his loved ones from available materials, as well as greeting cards, puzzles, and wrote poems.
"In the first 6 months, Aleksandr and I saw each other only three or four times — each time for no more than 1 hour," she recalls. Letters became the main means of communication: Yelena and Aleksandr wrote to each other every day. At first, calls were not allowed, but later — once a month for 15 minutes.
On the eve of his release, Aleksandr was sorting through a bag of letters from all over the world: he received more than 8,500 while in custody. "I can't let them go, they mean too much to me," he said.
Aleksandr was imprisoned for discussing the Bible with fellow believers. In December 2022, the Oktyabrskiy District Court of Krasnoyarsk sentenced the believer to 6 years in a penal colony for "organizing the activity of an extremist organization."
