Biography
Yuri Zalipaev was born in 1962 in Kuibyshev (now Samara). Seven years later, he and his parents moved to the Magadan region. In 1983, he married his former classmate Natalia and moved with her to Maisky (Kabardino-Balkaria). Here Yuriy worked as a driver, manager of a children's sports school and welder. He is fond of poetry and airbrushing, loves hiking.
Yuri and Natalia began studying the Bible together with Jehovah's Witnesses in 1993, and a year later they were baptized as followers of this religion on the same day. The couple raised their three children according to the teachings and commandments of the Bible. All of them, as well as Yuri's daughter-in-law, mother, and sister, also became Jehovah's Witnesses.
In August 2017, a criminal case was opened against this peaceful, deeply religious person under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - "incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity." He faces up to 5 years in prison. Investigators suggest that Yuri allegedly publicly called on Jehovah's Witnesses to "beat the Orthodox and Muslims." This accusation not only does not correspond to reality, but contradicts all common sense, as well as well-known facts: the renunciation of violence for Jehovah's Witnesses is so categorical that tens of thousands of believers of this religion preferred imprisonment, and sometimes certain death, refusing to serve in the armed forces of different countries.
On October 7, 2020, the judge of the Maysky District Court of Kabardino-Balkaria, Elena Kudryavtseva, fully acquitted Yuriy Zalipaev in his criminal case. In February 2021, the prosecutor's office made an official apology to the believer for the erroneously initiated case.