A few hours after the Russian Supreme Court announced the decision to liquidate the center of Jehovah’s Witnesses, late on the evening of April 20, 2017, a group of men drove up to two passenger cars to the largest worship building of Jehovah’s Witnesses in St. Petersburg, located on Kolomyazhsky Prospekt. They blocked the cars from the building. One of the visitors, shouting insults at the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the threat of physical harm, threw the facade of the building, including glass doors and windows, with pre-prepared cobblestones. The church has suffered significant damage.

 

Such a development of events was predicted by lawyers who spoke in court. A little earlier that day, speaking in the debate, Maxim Novakov, representing the center of Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted that the court could provoke a wave of violence against Witnesses: from damage to property to attacks on believers motivated by religious hatred. These are the inevitable consequences of the fact that peaceful people are groundlessly ranked as dangerous criminals.