"Criminal Prosecution for Acts of Mercy Makes No Sense to Me". Wife of Convicted Jehovah's Witness Fined in Moscow

Five months ago, Mariya Pankova, 51, from Moscow, met her husband, Sergey Tolokonnikov, at the gates of the penal colony where he had served a sentence for his faith. Now she has been penalized — a fine of 500,000 rubles. This decision was announced by the Savelovskiy District Court of Moscow on November 26, 2025.

"When my trial started and I said, that I didn't understand the charges against me at all, [the prosecutor] replied that, if anything was unclear my lawyer could explain it to me. But the lawyer asked the same thing... No answer was given; we never received one," Mariya said in her final statement. The prosecutor requested that the believer be sent to a penal colony for 2.5 years for attending Christian meetings for worship.

Mariya and Sergey's family has been living under prosecution for more than 4 years. Sergey spent most of that time in custody. The believer described what she felt: "We lived together for 27 years, and then I was alone... I felt like a little railroad car that had been moving smoothly and happily along the track of life behind an engine for many years — it was suddenly taken away. And now the car must move the entire load along a difficult track by itself — sometimes pushing, sometimes dragging, and sometimes helplessly crying by the wheels." During that period, Mariya had to care on her own for her 78-year-old disabled mother and her mother-in-law.

The investigation against Pankova began 2 months before her husband's release. "I have serious health problems," the believer said, " which worsened once the criminal case was initiated." The situation became even more difficult on the eve of the verdict: Mariya developed severe spinal pain and for several days could neither stand nor sit. During the same period, her mother-in-law passed away.

"When I was separated from my husband, my trust in God, like an anchor, kept me from falling into despair and panic," Mariya recalls. "When the criminal prosecution affected me personally, I realized I needed to develop even greater trust."

The prosecution of couples and multiple members of one family has already become a "hallmark" of Russian law enforcement agencies. Mariya's words reflect the feelings of many believers in similar circumstances: "Criminal prosecution for faith and acts of mercy in today's world makes no sense to me."