Nikolai Romaniuk

The senior presbyter of the Holy Trinity Church of Evangelical Christians in the Moscow Region. On 18 October 2024, searches were conducted at his home, at the homes of two other families of believers, and at two houses of prayer in the Moscow Region—one in Balashikha and one in Volokolamsk, according to church minister Roman Zhukov. In some cases, special-forces officers broke down doors. During the searches, computers, laptops, flash drives, disks, and certain documents were seized. One believer had all his bank cards, his mother’s pension card, and their foreign passports taken. Security forces also came to the home of Ilia and Sergei Romanyuk (Zhukov does not specify their relation to the pastor). Although no search was conducted there, both men were forced face-down at gunpoint and kept in that position for 12 hours, Zhukov claims. For an hour and a half of that time, the men were lying outside on the ground in light clothing and barefoot.

Pastor Nikolai Romaniuk was detained that same evening. According to Zhukov, he was urged to record a video message, possibly a confession, but he refused. On 20 October, a court ordered him into custody in a case concerning calls for activities “directed against the security of the Russian Federation,” based on an anti-war sermon he delivered on 25 September 2022. The hearing on the pretrial detention order was held behind closed doors.

On 3 September 2025, Romaniuk was sentenced to four years in a general-regime penal colony.

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