{"id":10140,"date":"2025-12-31T23:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T21:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=10140"},"modified":"2025-12-31T23:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T21:37:10","slug":"one-more-jehovahs-witness-from-saransk-released-his-wife-is-still-in-penal-colony-for-her-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/one-more-jehovahs-witness-from-saransk-released-his-wife-is-still-in-penal-colony-for-her-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"One More Jehovah’s Witness From Saransk Released. His Wife Is Still in Penal Colony for Her Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On December 30, 2025, Georgiy Nikulin, 62, left penal colony No. 3 in the Republic of Mari El, having served his sentence in full. The believer was met by his friends. His wife,\u00a0Yelena, could not share the joy of being released with him\u2014she is still in a penal colony.<\/p>\n

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The Nikulins, as well as four of their fellow believers,\u00a0were convicted\u00a0for their faith in August 2022. Georgiy and Yelena were sent to a pre-trial detention center, and after a court of appeal, they were transferred to penal colonies in different regions. For a long time, they did not have any communication: visits were impossible, and the couple were able to obtain permission for correspondence only after a year and a half of separation.<\/p>\n

In prison, Georgiy first worked in a sewing workshop, but due to vision problems, he was transferred to the assembly of electrical outlets. According to Georgiy, thanks to his faith, he endured difficult conditions of imprisonment, perhaps even easier than other prisoners. “I had high blood pressure. The upper one reached 230, which shocked the doctors,” the believer shared and added: “I constantly felt God’s support. Without his help, everything would have been completely different . . .”<\/p>\n

Elena Nikulina is due to be released in August 2026. Three other defendants are already at large, and the sentence of Vladimir Atryakhin, the father of two young children, expires in March 2028.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n

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The Case of Shevchuk and Others in Saransk<\/h3>\n
In February 2019, in Saransk, the FSB initiated a criminal case on extremism against three believers. After mass searches, the father of two young children, Vladimir Atryakhin, as well as Aleksandr Shevchuk and Georgiy Nikulin, ended up in a pre-trial detention center, where they spent 2 to 5 months. Later, 3 more defendants appeared in the case\u2014Aleksandr Korolev, Elena Nikulina and Denis Antonov. The case went to court in May 2021. The defense managed to show the court several times that the declassified witness Vlasov was giving false testimony. In August 2022, the believers were convicted: Atryakhin was sentenced to 6 years, the Nikulins\u20144 years and 2 months each, and Shevchuk, Korolev, and Antonov\u20142 years in a penal colony. The appeal left the verdict unchanged. In November 2023, Shevchuk was released from the colony, in June 2024, Korolev and Antonov were released, and in December 2025, Nikulin.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On December 30, 2025, Georgiy Nikulin, 62, left penal colony No. 3 in the Republic of Mari El, having served his sentence in full. The believer was met by his friends. His wife,\u00a0Yelena, could not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10142,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10140\/revisions\/10142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}