Case History
In March 2026, the FSB opened a criminal case against ten residents of Chita. The believers were suspected of organizing and participating in extremist activities merely for reading the Bible together with friends. The oldest among them, Anatoliy Pozdnyakov, was 67 years old at the time, while Svetlana Arefyeva and Anna Guseva were just 21. After the searches, eight of the defendants were placed under travel restrictions, Pozdnyakov was sent to house arrest, and Aleksey Karpov and Bakhtiyor Raupov were taken into custody.