Moscow court sentences emigrant Baptist pastor Yuri Sipko, 74, in absentia to five years for condemning the war
The former vice-president of the Baptist World Alliance was convicted of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army over a March 2022 livestream in which he condemned the invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow’s Kuntsevsky District Court on Wednesday sentenced Yuri Sipko, a 74-year-old Baptist pastor and former vice-president of the Baptist World Alliance, in absentia to five years in a penal colony, Mediazona reported from the courtroom. Prosecutors had asked for six years.
The case
Sipko was charged under the article on spreading “fakes” about the Russian army motivated by hatred (Article 207.3, Part 2, paragraph “d” of the Criminal Code). The case, which became known in August 2023, was based on a March 2022 livestream on the Spring of Life Church YouTube channel, in which he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called it aggression. In that stream he said the invasion had turned Ukraine’s land into “a cemetery of human evil.”
Emigration
A few days before searches in 2023, Sipko left Russia. Security forces searched his Moscow apartment and the office of the Kaluga Christian Centre. He was put on the wanted list in August 2023 and arrested in absentia in May 2026.
Sardaana News editorial position
The Russian state continues to take revenge on emigrants who opposed the war against Ukraine. A 74-year-old pastor who left the country is given a prison term for words spoken in a church livestream — the sentence cannot be served, but it marks him as a criminal, cuts him off from home and is meant to frighten everyone who stayed.
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