Updated: March 28, 2024
Name: Mirgorodskaya Olga Vladimirovna
Date of Birth: October 4, 1982
Current status: who has served the main sentence
Articles of Criminal Code of Russian Federation: 282.2 (2)
Sentence: penalty in the form of a fine in the amount of 300,000 rubles

Biography

Why can a respectable woman, a mother of two children, be persecuted in modern Russia? Olga Mirgorodskaya was suspected of extremism only because of her faith in Jehovah God.

Olga was born in 1982 in Severobaikalsk, a small picturesque town on the shores of Lake Baikal. She has a younger sister. In 1987, the family moved to the village of Lermontovka (Khabarovsk Territory) on the border with China, where Olga lives to this day.

As a child, Olga was fond of sewing dresses for dolls and read a lot. She loves all this now, too. She also knits and needlepoints in her free time and has recently mastered hairdressing.

After school, Olga acquired two specialties at the vocational school: a driver and a car mechanic. She worked in a school cafeteria, as a librarian, a secretary in a correctional school, a postman, and more recently as a nanny.

In the 2000s, Olga became interested in the Bible. She found there the answer to the question that worried her: what is the meaning of life? The practical value of this ancient book motivated her to become a Christian.

Olga is married and has two children. The 20-year-old daughter is already living separately. Olga and her husband are raising a 9-year-old son. At 6 a.m. on December 21, 2020, the security forces broke into their home and searched the apartment for 4.5 hours in the presence of the child. Because of this, the believer experienced great stress. She unexpectedly became one of the many believers against whom a criminal case was opened under an “extremist” article.

Case History

In November 2020, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Sergey Kazakov, a retired firefighter, and Olga Mirgorodskaya, a mother of two children. The investigation suspected Sergey of organizing extremist activities, and Olga of participating in it. A month later, the homes of peaceful believers were searched. Sergey was detained in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, where he was caring for an elderly mother who had suffered a stroke. He spent more than 5 months in the pre-trial detention center, another 2 months under house arrest. The case has been pending in court since February 2022. At a preliminary hearing, the judge decided to return the case to the prosecutor, but this decision was later overturned. In May, the case of the believers was again sent to court for consideration by the same composition. In August 2023, the court found Olga Mirgorodskaya and Sergey Kazakov guilty and fined them 300,000 and 500,000 rubles, respectively. The appeal upheld the verdict, but reduced the amount of the fine for Kazakov to 200,000 rubles.